MAKERS OF AMERICA" 



COTTON MATHER 



Cije puritan priest 



BY 



BARRETT WENDELL 




NEW YORK 
DODD, MEAD, AND COMPANY 

Publishers 



^^7 



V\ 



4. 



Copyright, 1891, 

By Dodd, Mead, and Co. 

All rights reserved. 



John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 



NOTE. 

Whoever finds anything in this little book 
must share my gratitude to the possessors 
of Cotton Mather's manuscripts, who have so 
generously put them at my disposal. To the 
Massachusetts Historical Society, the American 
Antiquarian Society, the Congregational Library, 
and Mrs. Skinner of Chicago, our most earnest 
thanks are due. 

I heartily regret that I have not been per- 
mitted to examine the exhaustive life of Cotton 
Mather left in manuscript by the late Rev. Mr. 
Marvin, of Lancaster, Massachusetts. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

I. Introduction i 

II. The Puritan Fathers : Cotton and 

Mather 4 

III. The Youth of Cotton Mather ... 21 

IV. The Fall of the Charter. —The Be- 

ginning OF Cotton Mather's Min- 
istry 39 

V. The Revolution of 1689 and the New 

Charter 70 

VI. Witchcraft 88 

VII. The End of Sir William Phipps . . . 124 

VIII. Harvard College 130 

IX. Cotton Mather's Private Life until 

THE Death of his Wife 154 

X. Cotton Mather's Private Life. — His 
Second Marriage.— Charter of Har- 
vard College. — Quarrel with Joseph 

Dudley 199 

XI. Cotton Mather's Private Life to the 

Death of his Second Wife .... 228 
XII. Cotton Mather's Private Life. — His 

Third Marriage 249 



vi CONTENTS. 



XIII. Inoculation 

XIV. The Death of Increase Mather . 
XV. The Last Diary of Cotton Mather 

XVI. The Last Days of Cotton Mather 

XVII. Cotton Mather, the Puritan Priest 



Page 
273 
282 
288 
297 
300 



Authorities 309 

Index 311 



COTTON MATHER. 



I. 

INTRODUCTION. 



Two hundred years ago there was living in Boston a 
man whose name is still remembered. Few nowadays 
know why we have heard of Cotton Mather; but even 
in this last decade of the nineteenth century few 
Yankees do not know his name. My object is to tell 
what manner of man he was, what manner. of world he 
lived in, why — with all the oddities and failings that 
are to us so grotesque — he seems well worth remem- 
bering. For this Cotton Mather was of those who take 
life in earnest ; and the life he took in earnest was, 
throughout the sixty-five years he passed on earth, the 
hfe of that New England which we who come of it like 
to believe the source of what is best in our own Amer- 
ica. If, for a while, we can make ourselves see life as 
he saw it, we shall have done what I have in view. 

Cotton Mather's diaries, together with his published 
works, express his views of hfe with rare completeness. 
So far as may be, then, I shall tell his story in his own 
words. In so doing, I shall doubtless expose myself to 
little less than the contempt of many serious students of 
Colonial history. The man's veracity has been seriously 
1 



2 COTTON MATHER. 

questioned \ and one can see why. In the first place, 
he was the champion of a cause that, even in his own 
time, was hopelessly lost, — the cause of the old hie- 
rarchy of New England, that once hoped to govern the 
Western world in accordance with no laws but those of 
God and Calvin ; and not the least tragic fate of men 
whose cause is hopelessly lost is that victorious posterity 
rarely appreciates how they can have been honest. 
Again, Cotton Mather was a priest, and in this world 
priests are generally accepted in one of two ways : 
whoever will not bow to their authority is lost in horror 
of their priestcraft. Finally, Cotton Mather was a man 
of such passion as rarely worries a human being from 
the cradle to the grave : throughout his life his emo- 
tions swept him into ecstasies which he found sometimes 
divine, sometimes diabolical; and, having a ready 
tongue and pen, he gave utterance to many hasty things 
not always consistent with fact or with each other. 
Wherefore such of posterity as have not loved his 
memory have inclined now and again to call him by 
a name he would probably have been the first to use in 
their place, — a very great liar. 

To me he seems otherwise. The better I know him, 
the more firmly I believe that from beginning to end 
he meant to be honest. Beyond doubt, like emotional 
people about us, — abolitionists, nationalists, what not, 
— he often saw things not as they were but as he would 
have had them. What counted for him was God's 
own work, what counted against him the Devil's ; and 
God's work, of course, was all good, and the Devil's 
refreshingly free from any redeeming trait. But I do 
not believe that he often wrote or spoke a word that he 



INTR OD UC TION 3 

disbelieved when it was written or spoken. He writes 
as follows in the Magnalia : — 

" I have not commended any person, but when I have 
really judged, not only that he deserved it, but also that it 
would be a benefit unto posterity to know wherein he de- 
served it ; . . . yett I have left unmentioned some cen- 
surable occurrences in the story of our Colonies, as things 
no less unuseful than improper to be raised out of the 
grave, wherein Oblivion hath now buried them." 

If we cannot accept him, then, as a veracious his- 
torian of all that went on before him, it is rather that 
his eyes were blinded than that his pen put down what 
he knew was error. And we may accept him, I believe 
more and more, as a singularly veracious historian of 
himself, who shows us year after year not exactly what 
things were, but exactly what he felt God bade him 
believe them. 

In the chapters that follow, I shall try first to give 
some account of the race he sprang from, and of the 
place and the period in which he found himself. Then 
I shall try to tell, from his own point of view, the story 
of his own career. And I shall be sorry if I do not make 
it seem that there is still good ground for believing that 
it was a good man they buried on Copp's Hill one 
February day in the year 1728. 



II. 

The Puritan Fathers : Cotton and Mather. 
1585-1662. 

To understand the founders of New England we 
must recall more than tradition has preserved. All 
the world knows that to a rare degree the settlers of 
Plymouth and of Massachusetts alike were men of 
character. Cromwell himself is no bad type of them. 
Among the descendants of one of the emigrant minis- 
ters, indeed, a tradition is preserved that Cromwell, at 
the height of his power, once said that he had been 
more afraid of their ancestor at football than of 
"armies in the field." One may almost say that all 
the notables during the first generation of New Eng- 
land were men who might have played at football with 
Cromwell, and who, if they had, would probably have 
kept his hands full. All the world knows, too, that 
these men came hither to found a state where for once 
the laws of God and of man should coincide. But in 
the course of two centuries the world has forgotten that 
their conception of the laws of God was very different 
from what prevails nowadays. Yet to understand the 
Puritans at all we must in a general way understand 
their creed. 

To the time of the Reformation, England, with the 
rest of Europe, had virtually accepted the doctrines of 



THE PURITAN FA THERS. 5 

Christianity as expounded by the CathoHc Church. 
The Reformation and the Renaissance, affecting Eng- 
land together, produced there a new state of rehgious 
thought, which was greatly fostered by the political 
accidents of the time. Under Queen EHzabeth the 
first duty of Englishmen was to fight Spain ; and Spain 
was the head and front of the powers that professed 
allegiance to the Church of Rome. Protestantism, in 
that sense of the word which means repudiation of 
Rome, was the spirit that must be nurtured. Bibles in 
the English language were chained to public reading- 
desks in the churches ; so were great folios of Foxe's 
Book of Martyrs : whoever could read might go and 
read the truth. The truth they read was not favor- 
able to ecclesiastical authority. When the danger of 
Spanish aggression was passed, the Church of England 
found that in fostering patriotic Protestantism it had 
permanently strengthened a class of people not free- 
thinking enough to discard religious authority, but 
firmly resolved to accept no other authority than Scrip- 
ture. The Scriptural creed thus developed in Eng- 
land, but formulated most definitely at Geneva, was the 
creed of the founders of New England. 

Stripped of subtlety and technicality, it may perhaps 
be stated as follows : ^ In the beginning God created 
man, responsible to Him, with perfect freedom of will. 
Adam, in the fall, exerted his will in opposition to the 
will of God : thereby Adam and all his posterity mer- 
ited eternal punishment. As a mark of that punish- 
ment they lost the power of exerting the will in 
harmony with the will of God, without losing their 

^ Magnalia, V. I. 



6 COTTON MATHER. 

hereditary responsibility to Him. But God, in His 
infinite mercy, was pleased to mitigate His justice. 
Through the mediation of Christ, certain human beings, 
chosen at God's pleasure, might be relieved of the just 
penalty of sin, and received into everlasting salvation. 
These were the elect : none others could be saved, 
nor could any acts of the elect impair their salvation. 
v/ Now there were no outward and visible marks by which 
the elect might be known : there was a fair chance, 
then, that any human being to whom the Gospel was 
brought might be of the number. The thing that most 
vitally concerned every man, then, was to discover 
whether he were elect, and so free from the just penalty 
of sin, ancestral and personal. The test of election 
was ability to exert the will in true harmony with the 
will of God, — a proof of emancipation from the he- 
reditary curse of the children of Adam : whoever 
could ever do right, and want to, had a fair ground for 
hope that he should be saved. But even the elect were 
infected with the hereditary sin of humanity ; and, be- 
sides, no wile of the Devil was more frequent than that 
which deceived men into believing themselves regener- 
ate when in truth they were not. The task of assuring 
one's self of election, then, could end only with life, — 
a life of passionate aspirations, ecstatic enthusiasms, 
profound discouragements. Above all, men must never 
forget that the true will of God was revealed, directly 
or by implication, only and wholly in Scripture : in- 
cessant study of Scripture, then, was the sole means by 
which any man could assure himself that his will was 
really exerting itself, through the mediatory power of 
Christ, in true harmony with the will of God. 



THE PURITAN FATHERS. 7 

Such, if I read the Magnaha aright, was the creed 
of the fathers of New England, at least as Cotton 
Mather understood it. To live in accordance with 
this, they crossed the Atlantic. To lead unmolested 
their lives in accordance with this, they confined the 
franchise to actual communicants, and dealt so sum- 
marily with whoever proclaimed other opinions, — 
Mrs. Hutchinson, Roger Williams, and the crazy fanat- 
ics whom they called Quakers. To preserve this unal- 
tered, they founded Harvard College. In obedience 
to the implications of this, they rated far above other 
men the official ministers of the Gospel. 

Cotton Mather sprang from a race of these minis- 
ters. His very name combined two of those most 
distinguished among the emigrant clergy of Massa- 
chusetts. In his chief book, the Magnalia, he has 
written the lives of his grandparents. And these 
lives, combining the historical and the domestic tra- 
ditions amid which he grew to manhood, deserve our 
attention, if we would understand the life he strove to 
live throughout in accordance with these traditions. 

Among the ministers who came from England in the 
full flush of their powers, none was more eminent than 
John Cotton.i Born at the town of Derby in 1585, 
the son of a pious and industrious lawyer, he was sent 
at the age of thirteen to Trinity College, Cambridge. 
Early chosen a fellow of Emanuel, he distinguished 
himself by 

"an University sermon, wherein, aiming more to preach 
j-^^than Christ, he used such florid strains, as extremely 
recommended bim unto the most, who relished the wisdom 
of words above the words of wisdom : though the pompous 
1 Magnalia, III. I. i. 



8 COTTON MATHER. 

eloquence of that sermon afterwards gave such a distaste 
unto his own rene'wed sotil^ that with a sacred indignation 
he threw his notes into the fire." For at this time, "such 
was the secret enmity & prejudice of an unregenerate soul 
against real holiness^ Sz such the ^orme/il which our Lord's 
witnesses give to the consciences of the earthly-minded^ 
that when he heard the bell toll for the funeral of Mr. Per- 
kins, his mind secretly rejoiced in his dehverance from that 
powerful ministry, by which his conscience had been so oft 
beleagured: the remembrance of which thing afterwards 
did break his heart exceedingly. " Converted by the preach- 
ing of a certain Dr. Sibs, he signalized his regeneration by 
preaching at St. Maries a sermon so plain in substance and 
diction that "the vain wits of the University . . . discov- 
ered their vexation ... by their not Juuujnitig} as ac- 
cording to their sinful & absurd custom they had formerly 
done. . . . Nevertheless, the satisfaction which he enjoyed 
in his own faithful soul, abundantly compensated unto him 
the loss of any human favour or honour.'' 

Shortly after this he was invited to become the min- 
ister of Boston, in Lincolnshire, where, in spite of the 
Bishop's opposition, he w^as settled at the celebrated 
church of St. Botolph for twenty years. Throughout 
this period his non-conformity steadily increased : his 
conscience bade him discard every rite and vestment 
for which he could not find authority in Scripture. At 
length, neither his learning, nor his character, nor the 
moral excellence of his work, nor the friends he had 
made among those in power, could save him from the 
consequences of a charge, brought by " a debauched 
fellow in the town," that the magistrates under his cure 
did not kneel at the sacrament. The debauched fel- 
low, in fulfilment of a prediction of "the renowned 
Mr. John Rogers of Dedham," 

^ Cf. page 19. 



THE PURITAN FATHERS. 9 

" quickly after this, died of the plague^ under an hedge, in 
Yorkshire ; and it was a long time ere any one could be 
found that would bury him. This "'tis to turn persecutor.''^ 

But Cotton was driven into hiding. 

Doubtful whether to remain in Boston, preaching in 
private, he consulted an elderly divine, who gave the 
opinion 

" 'That the removing of a minister was like the draining 
of a fish-pond : the good fish will follow the water, but eels, 
& other baggage fish, will stick in the mud.' Which 
things, when Mr. Cotton heard, he was not a little con- 
firmed in his inclination to leave the land.'' 

So he ultimately came to New England in a ship 
which brought two other notable ministers, — Hooker 
and Stone. It was pleasantly said at the time that this 
ship brought New England " three great necessities : 
Cotton for their clothing, Booker for X\\q\x fishing, and 
StoJie for their building.'' Among them the three 
managed to solace the voyage by a daily sermon ; and 
in favorable weather by three sermons a day. Hooker 
and Stone became the ministers of Hartford : Cotton 
remained in 

" New-Boston, which in a few years, by the smile of God, 
. . . came to exceed Old Boston in everything that renders 
a town considerable." On his arrival '• he found the whole 
country in a perplexed & a divided state, as to their civil 
constitution " ; and being requested to suggest convenient 
laws " from the laws wherewith God governed his ancient 
people," he recommended among other things '* that none 
should be electors, nor elected, . . . except such as were 
visible subjects of our Lord Jesus Christ, personally confed- 
erated in our churches. In these & many other ways, he 
propounded unto them an endeavour after a theocracy, as 
near as might be, to that which was the glory of Israel." 



10 COTTON MATHER. 

This theocracy came near getting him into trouble. 
In spite of the passionate defence of Cotton Mather, 
there is Uttle room for doubt that he was almost per- 
verted by the heresies of Mrs. Hutchinson ; but he re- 
traced his steps in time, learning for once in his hfe to 
conform. 

" Nineteen years & odd months he spent in this place, 
doing of good publickly & privately, unto all sorts of men, as 
it became 'a good man full of faith, & of the Holy Ghost.' 
Here in an expository way, he went over the Old Testament 
once, & a second time as far as the thirtieth chapter of 
Isaiah ; & the whole New Testament once, & a second time 
as far as the eleventh chapter to the Hebrews. Upon the 
Lords-days & lecture-days, he preached thorow the Acts of 
the Apostles ; the prophesies of Haggai & Zechariah, the 
books of Ezra, the Revelation, Ecclesiastes, Canticles, 
second & third Epistles of John, the Epistle to Titus, both 
Epistles to Timothy, the Epistle to the Romans, with innu- 
merable other scriptures on incidental occasions." 

At last, in 1652, going to preach at Cambridge, he 
caught cold ; his voice failed in the midst of his sermon. 
It had been 

"his declared wish ' That he might not outlive his work! ' 
. . . he had rather /^^^<?^^ than //z/^^^^rt^. . . . On the eigh- 
teenth of November he took in course, for his text, the four 
last verses of the second Epistle of Timothy,^ giving this 
reason for his insisting on so many verses at once, ' Because 
else (he said) I shall not live to make an end of this Epistle ' ; 

1 " Salute Prisca and Aquila, and the household of Onesiph- 
orus. Erastus abode at Corinth : but Trophimus have I left at 
Miletum sick. Do thy diligence to come before winter. Eubulus 
greeteth thee, and Pudens, and Linus, and Claudia, and all the 
brethren. The Lord Jesus Christ be with thy spirit. Grace be 
with you. Amen." 



THE PURITAN FA THERS. 1 1 

but he chiefly insisted on those words, ' Grace be with you 
an.' Upon the Lord's day following he preached his last 
sermon on Joh. i. 14,1 about that 'glory of the Lord Jesus 
Christ,' from \ht faitk to the sight whereof he was now 
hastening." 

In a day of secret humiliation and prayer, he took 
solemn leave of " that study which had been pei-fiwied 
with many such days before." As he lay sick, friends 
came to take leave of him. 

" When his colleague, Mr. Wilson, took his leave . . . 
with a wish that God would lift up the 'light of his counte- 
nance' upon him, he instantly replied, 'God hath done it 
already, brother ! ' He then called for his children, with 
whom he left the gracious cove?tant of God, as their never- 
failing portion : & now desired that he might be left private 
the rest of his minutes, for the more freedom of his applica- 
tions unto the Lord. So lying speechless a few hours, he 
breathed his blessed soul into the hands of his heavenly 
Lord, on the twenty-third of December, 1652, entring on 
the sixty-eighth year of his own age : & on the day — yea, 
at the hour — of his constant weekly labours in the lecture, 
wherein he had been so long serviceable, even to all the 
churches of New-England." 

Cotton was 

"an indefatigable student," who "judged ordinarily that 
more benefit was obtained ... by conversing with the dead 
[in books'\ than with the living [in talks\ . . . He was an 
early riser, taking the morning for the Muses; & in his lat- 
ter days forbearing a supper, he turned his former supping 
time into a reading, a thinking, a praying-time. Twelve 
hours a day he commonly studied, & would call that a 

' "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and 
we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the 
Father,) full of grace and truth." 



12 COTTON MATHER. 

scholar's day^ He read, wrote, and spoke Hebrew, 
Greek, and Latin. " For his logic he was completely fur- 
nished therewith to encounter the subtilest adversary of 
the truth." As for theology, even his "incomparable 
modesty" could not prevent his telling a private friend, 
" That he knew not of any difficult place in all the whole 
Bible, which he had not weighed, some what unto satis- 
faction. . . . And being asked, why in his latter days he 
indulged ftocturnal studies more than formerly, he pleas- 
antly replied, ' Because I love to sweeten my mouth with 
a piece of Calvin before I go to sleep.' " 

Two or three anecdotes, preserved by Cotton Mather, 
show that he had a vein of humour. On one occasion, 

"an humourous & imperious brother" complained to him 
*'that his ministry was become generally either dark or 
flat: whereto this meek man, very mildly & gravely, made 
only this answer : ' Both, brother, it may be, both : let me 
have your prayers that it may be otherwise.'" Again, "a 
company of vain, wicked men, having inflamed their blood 
in a tavern at Boston, & seeing that reverend, meek, & holy 
minister of Christ . . . coming along the street, one of them 
tells his companion, ' I '11 go,' saith he, ' & put a trick on 
old Cotton.' Down he goes, & crossing his way, whispers 
these words into his ear: 'Cotton,' said he, 'thou art an 
old fool.' Mr. Cotton replied, 'I confess I am so: the 
Lord make both me & thee wiser than we are, even wise 
unto salvation.' " One can see why " the keeper of the inn | 
where he did use to lodge, when he came to Derby, would ' 
profanely say to his companions, that he wished Mr. 
Cotton were gone out of his house; for 'he was not able 
to swear while that man was under his roof.' " 

In family devotions he was very short, accounting 
"that it was a thing inconvenient many ways to be 



THE PURITAN FATHERS. 13 

tedious in family duties." But his Sabbath-keeping 
was something marvellous. 

" The Sabbath he began the evening before : & I sup- 
pose," adds Cotton Mather, " 't was from his reason and 
practice that the Christians of New England have gener- 
ally done so too.^ When that evening arrived, he was usu- 
ally larger in his exposition in his family than at other 
times : he then catechised his children & servants, & 
prayed with them, & sang a psalm; from thence he retired 
unto study & secret prayer, till the time of his going unto 
his repose. The next morning, after his usual family wor- 
ship, he betook himself to the devotion of his retirements, 
& so unto the publick. From thence towards noon, he 
repaired again to the like devotions, not permitting the 
interruption of any other dinner, than that of a small 
repast carried up unto him. Then to the publick once 
more ; from whence returning, his first work was closet- 
prayer, then prayer with repetitions of the sermons in the 
family. After supper, he still sang a psalm ; which he 
would conclude with uplifted eyes & hands, uttering this 
doxology — ' Blessed be God in Christ our Saviour ! ' Last 
of all, just before his going to sleep, he would once again 
go into his prayerful study, & there briefly recommend all 
to that God, whom he served with a pure conscience." 

Such was John Cotton, at least as Cotton Mather 
believed him. He left a widow. The mothers of 
New England were not fond of widowhood. Before 
long, she became the second wife of the Reverend 
Richard Mather, minister of Dorchester. 

This Richard Mather^ was born in Lancashire, in 
1596. His parents, though in reduced circumstances^ 
gave him a liberal education. At fifteen he went as 

1 Cf. page 43. 2 Magnalia, III. IL xx. 



14 COTTON MATHER. 

schoolmaster to Toxteth Park, near Liverpool, where 
the 

"difference between his own walk & the most exact, watch- 
ful, fruitful, & prayerful conversation of some in the family 
. . . where he sojourned, . . . caused many sad fears to 
arise in his own soul that he was himself out of the way. 
. . . But . . . about the eighteenth year of his age, the 
good Spirit of God healed his broken heart, by pouring 
thereinto the evangelical consolations of 'His great & 
precious promises.' " 

A little later he went to Oxford ; and in 1618 he re- 
turned to Toxteth as minister. When the Bishop of 
Chester ordained him, the prelate startled him by re- 
questing a private interview. 

" Mr. Mather was now jealous that some informations 
might have been exhibited against him for his Puritanism ; 
instead of which, when the Bishop had him alone, what he 
said unto him was, ' I have an earnest request unto you, sir, 
& you must not deny me : 't is that you would pray for me ; 
for I know (said he) the prayers of men that fear God 
will avail much & you I believe are such a one.' " 

At Toxteth Richard Mather preached fifteen years. 
In his private manuscripts he wrote thus of the trial by 
which he was finally suspended for non-conformity : — 

" In the passages of that day I have this to bless the 
name of God for, that the terrour of their threatening words, 
of their pursevants, & of the rest of their pomp, did not 
terrifie my mind, but that I could stand before them with- 
out being daunted in the least manner, but answered for my 
self such words of truth & soberness as the Lord put into 
my mouth, not being afraid of their faces at all : which 
supporting & comforting presence of the Lord, I count not 
much less mercy, than if I had been altogether preserved 
out of their hands." — "But all means," adds Cotton 



THE PURITAN FATHERS. 15 

Mather, " used afterwards to get off this unhappy suspen- 
sion were ineffectual ; for when the visitors had been in- 
formed that he had been a xmm'S>itx fifteeti years, and, all that 
while never wore a siirpliss^ one of them swore, ' It had 
been better for him that he had gotten seven bastards ! ' " 

Once suspended, his thoughts turned to New Eng- 
land. 

" He drew up some arguments for his removal thither, 
which arguments were, indeed, the very reasons that moved 
the first fathers of New-England unto that unparellelled 
undertaking of transporting their families with themselves, 
over the Atlantic ocean: 

I. A removal from a corrupt church to 2, purer. 

II. A removal from a place where the truth & profes- 
sors of it are persecuted., unto a place of more quiet & 
safety. 

III. A removal from a place where all the ordinatices 
of God cannot be enjoyed, unto a place where they 7nay. 

IV. A removal from a church where the discipline of 
the Lord Jesus Christ is wanting, unto a church where ' 
may be practised. 

V. A removal from a place, where the ministers of God 
are unjustly inhibited from the execution of their functions, 
to a place where they may more freely execute the same. 

VI. A removal from a place, where there are fearful 
signs of desolation, to a place where one may have well 
grounded hope of God's protection." 

So in 1635, after a stormy voyage, he came to Bos- 
ton. The first church founded in Dorchester had 
followed its minister to Connecticut. Within a year, 
Richard Mather had gathered there a new church, 
where 

" he continued, a blessing unto all the churches in this wil- 
derness until his dying day, even for near upon four and 



t6 COTTOy AfATfiER. 

thirty years together. . . He never changed his habitation 
after this till he went unto the 'house eternal in the heav- 
ens ' ; albeit his old people of Toxteth vehemently solicited 
his return unto them when the troublesome Hierarchy in 
England was deposed.'* 

In 1669 he died of the stone, "wherein, accord- 
ing to Solomon's expression of it, 'the wheel was 
broken at the cistern.' " 

"As he judged that a preacher of the gospel should hQ, 
he was a very hard sttidefit : yea, so intent was he upon his 
beloved studies, that the morning before he died, he im- 
portuned the friends that watched with him to help him into 
the room, where he thought his usual works & books ex- 
pected him ; to satisfie his importunity they began to lead 
him thither; but finding himself unable to get out of his 
lodging-room, he said, ' I see I am not able ; I have not 
been in my study several days ; & is it not a lamentable 
thing, that I should lose so much time ? ' " 

His temperament was sombre, self-conscious. 

" He was for some years exercised with . . . uncertain- 
ties about his everlasting happiness. ... In those dark 
hours ... a gi^orious light rose unto him . . . which I 
find in his private papers thus expressed: ' My heart re- 
lented with tears at this prayer, that God would not deny 
me an heart to bless him, & not blaspheme him, that is so 
holy, just, and good ; though I should be excluded from 
his presence, & go down into everlasting darkness & dis- 
comfort.'" On his death-bed, "though he lay in a mortal 
extremity of pain, he never shrieked, he rarely groaned, 
with it ; & when he was able, he took delight in reading 
Dr. Goodwin's discourse about patience, in which book he 
read until the very day of his death. When they asked 
' how he did ? ' his usual answer was, '■ Far from well, yet 
far better than mine iniquities deserve.'" 



THE PURITAN FATHERS. ly 

His last recorded words were a solemn charge to his 
son as to who might properly be admitted to baptism, 
— a question then seriously disturbing the churches of 
New England. The only bright touch in Cotton Math- 
er's picture of him is that which tells how, one Satur- 
day evening in 1661, two of his sons, both ministers, 
arrived at about the same time, — one from England, 
one from 

" a Remote place where he was now Stationed in the Coun- 
try ; And the Comforted Old Patriarch, sat shining like 
the Sun in Gemini^ & hearing his two Sons, in his own 
Pulpit entertain the People of GOD, with Performances, 
that made all People Proclaim him, An Happy Father."^ 

Richard Mather's first wife^ was 

" Mrs. Katharine Holt; a Gentlewoman Honourable for 
her Descent J but much more so, for her Vertiie. . . . She 
sometimes told her Son, while he was yet scarce more than 
an Infant, but very much her Darlings That she desired of 
the Glorious GOD only two things on his behalf; the one 
was, The Grace to Fear & Love GOD; the other was, the 
Learning that might Accomplish him to do Service for 
GOD. . . . Among her Instructions, it is to be Reinembred 
that she mightily inculcated the Lesson of Diligence upon 
him, & often put him in Mind of that Word, Seest thou a 
Man Diligent in his Business : He shall STAND BE- 
FORE KINGS. . . . When he was about Fifteen Years 
Old, she Died Marvellously Triumphing over the Fear oj 
Death, which thro' all her Life she had been Afraid of. 

" If a pretty late Abordon might have Passed for a 
Birth, it might have been said of this Gentlewoman, she 
was a Mother of Seven Sons. ... Four proved Useful, & 
Faithful & Famous Ministers of the Gospel. Increase 

1 Parentator, p. 23. - Ibid, pp. 3-5. 

2 



1 8 COTTON MATHER, 

was the Youngest of them; Whom his Father called so 
. . . because of the never-to-be-forgotten Increase^ of every 
sort, wherewith GoD favoured the country, about the time 
of his Nativity. . . . Had he been Indisputably a seventh 
son, yet he would not have Countenanced the Foolish, 
Profane, Magical Whimsey of the silly People which fur- 
nishes the seventh Son, with I know not what uncommon 
Powers; 'T was among the Vulgar Errors always derided 
with him. However, we shall hear of Strange Things 
done by him, & for him." 

Born at Dorchester in June, 1639, Increase Mather,^ 
to use his own words, 

" Swam quietly in a Stream of Impiety & Carnal Security 
for many Years together, till it pleased the Lord in the year 
1654, in Mercy to Visit me with a sore Disease, which was 
Apprehended to be the Stone." 

The serious frame of mind thus induced resulted in 
his conversion. In 1656 he took his first degree at 
Harvard College, 

" At which time the Praesident,^ who was deep in the Dark 
Principles with which the Stagyrite has for so many Ages 
Tyrannized over Human Understanding, upon a Dislike of 
the Ramcsan Strains in which our Young Disputant was 
carrying on his Thesis, would have cut him Short; but Mr. 
Mitchel Publickly Interposed, Pergat, Qucbso, nam doctis- 
sime disputat.^^^ 

In 1657, 

"on his Birth-Day, he Preached his First Ser7non, at a 
Village belonging to Dorchester. And on the next Lord's- 

1 Throughout my account of Increase Mather, I follow Cot- 
ton Mather's " Parentator." 

2 Charles Chauncy, who was inclined to Baptist heresies. 

3 "Let him go on, I beg, for he is arguing like a great 
scholar." 



THE PURITAN FATHERS. 1 9 

Day he Preached in his Fathers Pulpit, . . . When the 
whole Auditory were greatly Affected with the Light & 
Flame, in which the Rare Youth Appeared unto them : 
Especially was his Father so, who could scarce Pronounce 
the Blessing, for the Tears which from the Blessing he 
had himself now so Sensibly Received, he was thrown 
into." 

A month later, young Increase Mather sailed for 
England, whence he presently went to Dublin, where 
his brother Samuel was settled as a minister. The 
next year he proceeded Master of Arts at Trinity 
College, where 

" the Scholars were so Pleased with the Wit & Sense & 
Polite Learning brilliant in his Exercises, that they Pub- 
lickly Hummed'^ him -, which being a Complement that he 
had never heard Paid unto any one before, at first had Hke 
to have given too much Surprise unto him." 

Declining a fellowship, he preached for one winter 
in Devonshire ; and in 1659 became chaplain to the 
garrison of Guernsey. But the Restoration was upon 
him. In 1660, finding that he must "either conform 
to the Revived Superstitions in the Church of England, 
or leave the Island," he gave up his charge. Refusing 
a living in the Established Church, disappointed in a 
chance to travel on the Continent, his thoughts turned 
homeward. "In fine, all things Conspired for the 
moving of the Star, to illuminate the Western Haemi- 
sphere." 

In June, 1661, he sailed from Weymouth ; in August 
he came to his " comforted old patriarch " of a father 

1 Cf. page 8. A capital example this of Cotton Mather's 
" inconsistency." 



20 COTTON MATHER. 

at Dorchester, who had now for six years been the 
husband of John Cotton's widow. The following win- 
ter Increase Mather passed in preaching alternately for 
his father and " to the New Church in the North-part 
of Boston." In the course of the year, Mrs. Mather's 
daughter, Maria Cotton, conquered his affections. 

*' On March 6, 1662, he Came into the Married State ; 
Espousing the only Daughter, of the celebrated Mr. John 
Cotloii J in Honour to whom he did . . . call his First- 
born son by the Name of Cotton." 

Of such parentage, whose story I have told chiefly 
in his own words. Cotton Mather was born, in Boston, 
on the 1 2th of February, 1662-3. 



III. 

The Youth of Cotton Mather. 
1662-1678. 

At this time the Plymouth Colony was about forty 
years old, the Charter of Massachusetts about thirty. 
Their story has been told again and again. Founded 
shortly before Laud became Archbishop of Canterbury, 
the Colonies were first strengthened by such emigration 
as was stimulated by the persecutions in England, and 
then confirmed in their strength by the independent 
responsibility thrust upon them by the civil wars, which 
kept the attention of England centred on herself. 
During the Commonwealth, home matters were too 
important to permit much attention in England to 
subjects beyond the Atlantic; for the rest, these pro- 
fessed a faith and a policy not very diff'erent from 
those which for twelve years prevailed in the mother 
country. 

What that faith was, we have seen; and in some 
degree what that policy was, too. It was based on a 
hope that the government of the visible world might, 
by the grace of God, be brought into harmony with the 
system by which God governed the invisible. At the 
outset the Puritans were met by a difficulty they never 
quite realized. The government of God, as they under- 
stood it, was the reverse of democratic. But the very 



2 2 COTTON MATHER. 

fact that drove them to a wilderness for the found- 
ing of their system was the assumption at home of 
divinely autocratic power by kings and bishops for 
whose claims they could find no authority in Scripture. 
On Scripture only they were determined to rest ; but 
who should interpret Scripture? "All things in Scrip- 
ture," they themselves professed, " are not alike plain 
in themselves, nor alike clear unto all." ^ Clearly no 
bishops, no ecclesiastical tradition, could do their busi- 
ness; they must fall back on active ministers of the 
Gospel. But whence came the authority of these min- 
isters, which might be held final? Again, only from 
Scripture, or from such occasional presences of God as 
we shall see revealing themselves in the ministrations 
of the Mathers. And who should designate the Scrip- 
turally authorized interpreters of the Scripture on which 
all authority must ultimately rest? Scripture, unhap- 
pily, contained no prophetic catalogue of its proper 
exponents. They fell back on the visible members of 
churches, on those of themselves whose public pro- 
fession of religious experience had proved, as far as 
earthly processes could prove, their regeneration. The 
elect of God became the electors of God's chosen. In 
other words, their system at once claimed autocratic 
power, temporal and spiritual, and yet rested its claim 
on something remarkably like the consent of the gov- 
erned. They strove to establish a thing that can never 
exist, — a Protestant priesthood. 

The democratic spirit implied in all Protestantism, in 
all revolution, was greatly strengthened by the political 
circumstances in which they found themselves. Under 

1 Magnalia, V. I. i. vii. 



ms YOUTH. 23 

the first Charter of Massachusetts, virtually that of a 
trading corporation, the freemen elected the magis- 
trates. And though for more than a generation the 
theocratic principles of John Cotton prevailed, and 
none were freemen but the members of churches, there 
was neither among the churches nor among their mem-' 
bers that heavenly unanimity which alone could pre- 
vent voters from now and then — and more and more 
— voting as they pleased. "The will of man," their 
creed admitted, " is made perfectly and immutably free 
to good alone in the state of glory only." ^ In the firsts 
thirty years of their life in America, the theocratic spirit 
was strong enough to establish the terms of the fran- 
chise, to banish Roger Williams and Mrs. Hutchinson, 
to hang the Quakers ; the democratic meanwhile had 
established and maintained civil order, and had been 
forced by the presence of Indians and other harassing 
neighbours into strengthening demonstrations of mili- 
tary power, as well as into that Confederacy of New 
England whose memory is dear to lovers of Union. 
The democratic spirit, I take it, made Sir Henry Vane 
Governor in 1637; a year or two later, the theocratic 
drove him in disgust from the Colony. It was the 
growth of the democratic that stopped the hanging of 
Quakers before Cotton Mather was born. 

In 1660, Charles II. came to the throne of his 
father. Massachusetts had grown unaccustomed to 
paying much attention to what went on in England. 
She sent him a complimentary address ; but it was 
more than a year before she was brought to the point 
of officially proclaiming him sovereign. Theocracy and 

1 Magnalia, V. I. i. ix. 



24 COTTON MATHER. 

democracy, priesthood and protestantism, agreed in 
profound disinclination to be meddled with. To- 
gether they met in peaceable but dogged resistance 
to the effort of royal commissioners to assert in New 
England a power superior to that of the Charter. In 
their common cause their mutual antagonism was for- 
gotten. What is more, the two spirits were not sharply 
distinguished : both were inherent in the original con- 
stitution of the Colonies. Theoretically, pretty much 
everybody beheved at once in the divine authority of 
the clergy, and in the right of godly men to say who 
should preach to them and who govern them. 

It was at this time that Cotton Mather came into the 
world. Little record is preserved of his childhood ; 
but he was of a temperament at once so sensitive and 
so precocious that we must consider the aspects of life 
that first presented themselves to him. 

For above a year. Increase Mather hesitated to 
accept the charge of the Second Church in Boston, 
having 

" some Views ... of greater service elsewhere. At last, 
the Brethren of the Church kept a Day of Supplicatio7is 
unto Him who has all Hearts in His Hands, to pray that 
GOD would Incline him and Perswade him, to Accept the 
Invitation which they had given him. From This Day, he 
felt another Biass on his mind, and soon Complied with their 
Desires; and on May 27, 1664, he did with a great 
Solemnity, wherein his Father publickly gave him his 
Charge, Accept the Pastoral Care of the Flock ; with 
which, (Them and Their Children,) he Continued Serving 
the Lord, with many Tears and Temptations, and keeping 
back nothing that was Profitable for them, for more than 
Threescore Years together." 



HIS YOUTH. 25 

Early in his work he was assailed by Satanic tempta- 
tions to doubt the existence of God : these he over- 
came, not by reasoning, — '^ it puts too much Respect 
upon a Devil, to Argue and Parley with him, on a 
Point which the Deri/ himself Believes and Trembles 
at,'' — but by ''flat contradiction," fortified by the 
reflection that, since some of his prayers had been 
answered, there must evidently be a God to answer 
them. Failing in this direct attack, the Devil betook 
himself to the hearts of the parish, which he so hard- 
ened as to keep Increase Mather's salary for some 
years decidedly below his expenses. Amid the heavy 
debts that naturally followed, the good man had re- 
course to prayer, sometimes tempered with thanksgiv- 
ings for such blessings as he was graciously permitted 
to enjoy. After a while, the church paid him well, to 
the very end of his life, — a consummation which Cot- 
ton Mather attributes chiefly to these prayers. In fact, 
the form which the answer to these prayers probably 
took was a growing and well grounded conviction on 
the part of the members of the Second Church that un- 
awares, in calling to their ministry a promising young 
man, they had secured to themselves the ablest and most 
eminent minister in America. 

An indefatigable worker he seems to have been. His 
diary records devices for saving and employing every 
moment, and for maintaining incessant seriousness of 
heart. And in 1669, when his father died, and his 
brother Eleazar, of whose death he had supernatural 
warning, he broke down. The mood in which, some 
months later, he recovered, is best phrased in his own 
diary, for the nth of June, 1670 : — 



2 6 COTTON MATHER. 

" The Threefold Wish of the Chief of Sinners. I Wish ! 
I Wish I I Wish! i. That I may do some Special Ser- 
vices for my dear God in Jesus Christ before I leave this 
World. 2. I would fain Leave So7nethiiig behind me, that 
may be doing of Good upon Earthy after I shall be in 
Heaven. 3. After I have finished my Doing Work, I 
would fain Suffer for the Sake of my dear God, and for 
Jesus Christ." 1 

In 1674, " observing the Sins of the Times, & there- 
with Discerning the Sig?is of the Times,'' he preached 
a prophetic sermon on the text, " The Day of Trouble 
is near." The next two years were the most dread- 
ful in the history of New England. The Colonies, 
which since the discomfiture of the royal commission- 
ers had been disturbed by no more insidious tests of 
their civil strength than discussions about baptism, 
and the intrigues concerning the presidency of Harvard 
College that broke the heart of Leonard Hoar, were 
plunged into the horrors of King Philip's war. Palfrey 
tells in detail the story of that helpless struggle of the 
native savages, and of the organized military power 
which at last exterminated them with no foreign aid. 
Sewall's Diary gives glimpses of the ghastly news of 
massacre that now and again found its way to Boston. 
But neither Palfrey nor Sewall emphasizes the senti- 
ments concerning the Indians that pervade the long 
accounts of the struggle which form an interesting part 
of Cotton Mather's " Magnalia." In the view of the 
Puritans, the Indians were the wretched remnant of a 
race seduced to the Western Hemisphere by the Devil 
himself, that he might rule them undijtnrbed by the 

1 Cf. page 47. 



HIS YOUTH. 27 

rising light of the Gospel. The landing of the Pilgrims 
was an invasion of the Devil's own territory ; the mis- 
sionary work of Eliot and the Mayhews was a direct 
storming of his strongholds, almost unprecedented in 
his experience. The outbreak of the Indians was his 
natural retort ; every arrow, every bullet, every war- 
song and magic chant, of the expiring natives of New 
England was a missile aimed by Satan himself against 
the power of Christ. The laity met the attack with 
gunpowder ; the clergy were no less active with 
prayer. To which should be attributed the final vic- 
tory, — a victory not so much over Philip and his 
followers as over Philip's Satanic master, — opinions 
may differ. But Increase Mather was not disposed 
to undervalue his petitions to the Lord : his estimate 
of them was confirmed by a singular experience in 
August, 1676. 

" He had for diverse Lords- Days,'" writes Cotton Mather, 
" made the Death of that Miserable King, a Petition which 
in his Public Prayers he somewhat Enlarged upon> But 
on one Lords-Day he quite forgot it; for which Forgetful- 
iiess I well Remember, that I heard him wondring at, and 
Blaming of, himself in the Evening. However, he was 
more Sadsfied, when a few Hours after, there came to 
Town the Tidings, That before That Lords-Day, the 
Thing was Accomplished.'''' — "I will not Theologize,'' 
writes Cotton blather a little later, "much less will I 
Philosophize, upon the Original and Operation of those 
Prc^sagious Impressions about Future Events, which are 
often Produced in Minds, which by Piety and Purity 
and Co7itemplation, and a Prayerful and Careful walk 
with God, are made more susceptible of them. I am 
only to Observe that this Holy Man of Cod was no 
stranger to them." 



28 COTTON MATHER. 

He was no stranger, either, to ecstasies of an even 
more mysterious kind. 

*' As I was Praying," he wrote in 1672, " my Heart was 
exceedingly Melted, and methoughts, saw God before my 
Eyes in an Inexpressible Manner, so that I was Afraid I 
should have fallen into a Trance in my Study." — " In his 
latter years," writes Cotton Mather, "he did not Record 
so many of these HeaveJily Afflaiions, because they grew 
so frequent with him. And he also found . . . that the 
Flights of a Soul rapt up into a more Intimate Conversa- 
tion with Heaven, are such as cannot be exactly Remein- 
bred with the Happy Partakers of them.'' 

Such was the career of Cotton Mather's father during 
the first sixteen years of the boy's life. During these 
years must have been founded and confirmed the 
passionate personal affection that marked their relations 
throughout life. Increase Mather, I take it, was of a 
temper whose affections were most conciliated by en- 
thusiastic acquiescence. Cotton Mather never observed 
any other law of God quite so faithfully as the Fifth 
Commandment. And the father he delighted to honour, 
the father who handed down traditions of ancestors 
equally honourable, was at the same time clothed with 
the divine authority of the ministry, to all appearances 
specially favoured by God, and revered by the public 
both personally and in his official capacity as minister 
of the Second Church and Fellow of Harvard College. 
Under these circumstances, nothing could have made 
a stronger or more lasting impression on the boy's mind 
than the example and the teachings of his father. How 
that example impressed him, his accounts of his father 
and his grandparents show. Exactly what those teach- 



mS YOUTH. 29 

ings were is not recorded. Two or three records of 
domestic life at this time, however, may help us guess 
what Increase Mather's teachings must have been. 

To understand these records nowadays, we must 
recall afresh the creed that at almost every moment 
made the concerns of another world than this the chief 
reality in the minds of the Puritans. It was our duty, 
they held, to live for the glory of God ; only by so 
living, with all our hearts, could we assure ourselves of 
the election which alone could save us from the eternal 
penalty of Adam's sin and our own. The first thing for 
us to learn was acquiescence in the will of God, — in 
His eternal justice. His unmerited and for all we could 
see capricious grace ; without such acquiescence our 
wills must inevitably exert themselves in unregenerate 
baseness. At w^orst we could be no worse off than our 
damnable deserts ; and if at any time we had the in- 
effable joy to find ourselves elect, nothing could more 
exquisitely torture us than the memory of early godless- 
ness. As soon as children could talk, then, they were 
set to a process of deliberate introspection, whose mark 
is left in the constitutional melancholy and the frequent 
insanity of their descendants. 

In the light of these facts, two entries in Sewall's 
Diary are even more significant than grotesque. 

"Nov. 6," 1692, runs the first, '^Joseph' threw a knop 
of Brass and hit his Sister Betty on the forhead so as to 
make it bleed and swell; upon which, and for his playing 
at Prayer4ime, and eating when Return Thanks, 1 whipd 
him pretty smartly When I first went in (call'd by his 
Grandmother) he sought to shadow and hide himself from 

1 Born 15 August, 1688. 



30 



COTTON MATHER. 



me behind the head of the Cradle : which gave me the 
sorrowfull remembrance of Adam's carriage." 

The second is for January 13, 1695-6 : — 

" When I came in, past 7 at night, my wife met me in the 
Entry and told me Betty 1 had surprised them. ... It 
seems Betty Sewall had given some signs of dejection and 
sorrow ; but a Httle after diner she burst out into an 
amazing cry, which caus"d all the family to cry too ; Her 
Mother ask"d the reason : she gave none ; at last said she 
was afraid she should goe to Hell, her sins were not par- 
don'd. She was first wounded by my reading a Sermon of 
Mr. Norton's, about the 5th of Jan. Text Jno. 7. 34, Ye 
shall seek me and shall not find me. And those words in 
the Sermon, Jno. 8. 21, Ye shall seek me and shall die in your 
sins, ran in her mind, and terrified her greatly. And stay- 
ing at home Jan. 12, she read out of Mr. Cotton Mather — 
Why hath Satan filled thy heart, which increas'd her Fear. 
Her Mother ask'd her whether she pray'd. She answered, 
Yes; but feared her prayers were not heard because her 
Sins not pardon'd. :\Ir. Willard,"^ though sent for timelyer, 
. . came not till after I came home. He discoursed with 
Betty who could not give a distinct account, but was con- 
fused as his phrase was, and as had experienced in himself. 
Mr. Willard pray"d excellenth'. The Lord bring Light and 
Comfort out of this dark and dreadful Cloud, and Grant that 
Christ's being formed in my dear child, may be the issue 
of these painfull pangs."' 

A familiar example of infant piety, from the Magna- 
lia,^ shows what elect children were expected to be. 

" Anne Greenough . . . left the world when she was but 
about five years old. and yet gave astonishing discoveries 

1 Born 29 December, 16S1. 

2 Minister of the Old South Church. 

3 VL VIL, Appendix. 



HIS YOUTH. 31 

of a regard unto God, and Christ, and her own soul, before 
she went away. When she heard any thing about the Lord 
Jesus Christ, she would be strangely transported, and rav- 
ished in her spirit at it ; and had an unspeakable delight 
in catechizing. She would put strange questions about 
eternal things, and make answers her self that were ex- 
treamly pertinent. Once particularly she asked, 'Are we 
not dead in sin ? ' and presently added, ' But I will take 
this way: the Lord Jesus Christ shall make me alive.' 
She was very frequent and constant in secret prayer, and 
could not with any patience be interrupted in it. She told 
her gracious mother, 'that she there prayed for her ! ' and 
was covetous of being with her mother, when she imagined 
such duties to be going forward. When she fell sick at 
last of a consumption, she would not by sports be diverted 
from the thoughts of death, wherein she took such pleas- 
ure that she did not care to hear any thing else. And if 
she were asked 'whether she were ready to die ? ' she would 
still cheerfully reply, ' Ay, by all means, that I may go to 
the Lord Jesus Christ.' " 

Such domestic influences as these surrounded Cot- 
ton Mather's childhood. The Boston in which they 
flourished was between thirty and forty years old. 
From a bare peninsula of such gravelly hills as one 
may still see about the harbour, it had become a flour- 
ishing seaport, in aspect not unlike the older parts of 
Newburyport or Portsmouth to-day. The population 
of ^Lassachusetts in 1665 was, according to Palfrey, 
about twenty-five thousand, of whom a large minority 
resided in the capital. New England, in short, was 
becoming too important to be much longer abandoned 
to its own devices. By far the most vivid pictures of 
the social life of the time are in Sewall's Diary. 
People were forced by public opinion to the willing 



32 COTTON MATHER. 

performance of their several duties : they attended to 
their business, they took conscientious interest and 
part in poHtics, they went to church as often as pos- 
sible, — which was at least three times a week, — and 
their most edifying festivals were the frequent funerals 
incident to the physical hardship of the period. Per- 
haps the most suggestive fact concerning their extreme 
simplicity of manners is, that young people of the 
better sort habitually went into domestic service. The 
Se walls were people of consideration; but in 1676 
Sewall's sister Jane came from Newbury to live with 
Mrs. Usher; and, finding that this lady had supplied 
herself with help, went to live at Sewall's *' Father 
Hull's," who wanted a maid, and discovered that it 
was hard to find a good one.^ hX. this time Seth 
Shove, a minister's son, and later a minister himself, 
was also living at Mr. Hull's, where on the day of his 
arrival a neighbour, mistaking him in the dark for a 
stray dog, had knocked him over the head, — a cir- 
cumstance which led Sewall to fear that "• the Devil 
seemed to be angry at the child's coming to dwell 
here." ^ And a little earlier Sewall gives a very curious 
account of the spiritual experience of one Tim Dwight, 
son of a gentleman in Dedham, and likewise appren- 
ticed to Father Hull.^ Just after prayers one day, Tim 
fell in a swoon, and, recovering, in a most incoherent 
condition lamented that his day of grace was out. 
Sewall reproached him, saying that " 't was sin for any 
one to conclude themselves Reprobate." But Tim was 
not to be comforted. 

1 Sewall's Diary, I. 34. 35. 

2 Ibid., 30. ' 3 Ibid., 15, 16. 



HIS YOUTH. i-ii 

" Notwithstanding all this semblance of compunction," 
adds Sewall, " 't is to be feared that his trouble arose from 
a maid whom he passionately loved : for that when Mr. 
D wight and his master had agreed to let him goe to her, he 
eftsoons grew well." A fortnight later, Sewall "spake to 
Tim of this, asked him whether his convictions were off. 
He answered, no. I told him how dangerous it was to 
make the convictions wrought by God's spirit a stalking 
horse to any other thing. Broke off, he being called away." 

In such a society, and among such domestic influ- 
ences as we have seen, Cotton Mather grew up. Late 
in life, he wrote for his son Samuel some account of 
his early years.^ 

" I desire to bewayl unto the very end of my Life, the 
early Ebullitions of Original Sin, which appeared at the 
very Beginning of it. Indeed 3^our Grandfather, tho' he 
were a wise and strict parent, would from the observation of 
some Dispositions in me, comfort himself with an Opinion 
of my being Sanctified by the Holy Spirit of God in my very 
infancy. But he knew not how vile I was, he saw not the 
instances of my going astray, even while I was yet an in- 
fant. However, there were some good things in my child- 
hood, in which I wish 7ny child may do better than L I 
began to pray, even when I began to speak. I learned 
myself to write before my going to school for it. I used 
secret prayer, not confining myself to Fonnsm it : and yett 
I composed Forins of prayer for my school-mates (I sup- 
pose when I was about seven or eight years old), and obliged 
them \.o pray. Before I could write Sermons in the public 
Assemblies I commonly tvrote what I remembered when I 
came home. I rebuked my play mates for their w'cked 
words and ways ; and sometimes I suffered from them, the 
persecution of not only Scoffs but Blows also, for my 

1 Paterna. MS. in the library of the late Judge Skinner, of 
Chicago. 

3 



34 COTTON MATHER. 

Rebukes, which when somebody told your Grandfather, I 
remember he seemed vQ.ry glad, yea, almost proud of my 
Affronts, and I then wondered at it, tho' afterwards I better 
understood his Heavenly principles."' 

The principal schoolmaster of this godly youth was 
the celebrated Ezekiel Cheever, to whose memory Cot- 
ton Mather paid a heartfelt tribute : 

" 'T is Corlett's praise and Cheever's, we must own, 
That thou, New England, art not Scythia grown." ^ 

Sewall gives a graphic account of the last days of 
this famous pedagogue,^ ending with this sketch of 
his life : — 

" He was born January 25, 1614. Came over to N". E. 
1637, to Boston : To New-Haven 1638. Married in the Fall 
and began to teach School; which Work he was constant in 
till now. First, at New-Haven, then at Ipswich ; then at 
Charlestown ; then at Boston, whither he came 1670. So 
that he has Laboured in that Calling Skillfully, diligently, 
constantly. Religiously, Seventy years. A rare Instance of 
Piety, Health, Strength, Serviceableness. The Wellfare of 
the Province was much upon his Spirit. He abominated 
Perriwigs." ^ 

What Cotton Mather studied, and how he comported 
himself under this master, appears from the manuscript 
he left his son.^ 

1 Corderius Americanus (1708). 

2 Diary, II. 230, 231 (August, 1708). 

3 This was always a serious matter with Sewall : " Friday, 
Nov. 6 [16S5]. Having occasion ... to go to Mr. Hayward, 
the Publick Notary's House, I speak to )iim about his cutting 
off his Hair, and wearing a Perriwig of contrary Colour : men- 
tion the words of our Saviour, Can ye not make an Hair white 
or black. ... He alledges, the Doctor advised him to it. " 
Diary, I. 102. And of. II. 36, 37. 

4 Paterna. 



HIS YOUTH. 35 

"One special Fault of my childhood (against which I 
would have you my'son be cautioned) was idleness. And 
one thing that occasioned me very much idle time., was 
the Distance of my Father's Habitation from the School; 
which caused him out of compassion for my Tender and 
Weakly constitution to keep me at home in the Winter. 
However I then much employed myself in Church History; 
and when Summer arrived I so plied my Business, that 
thro' the Blessing of God upon my endeavours, at the Age 
of little more th^iu eleven years I had composed many Z^//;/ 
exercises, both in prose and verse, and could speak Latin so 
readily, that I could write notes of sermons of the English 
preacher, in it. I had conversed with Cato., Corderius, 
Terence., Tully, Ovid, and Virgil. I had made Epistles and 
Themes ; presenting my first Theme to my Master, without 
his requiring or expecting as yett any such thing of me; 
whereupon he complimented me Laiidabilis Dilige?itia 
tua. 1 I had gone through a great part of the New Tes- 
tament in Greek, I had read considerably in Socrates and 
Homer, and I had made some entrance in my Hebrew gram- 
mar. And I think before I came to Fourteen, I composed 
Hebrew exercises and Ran thro' the other Sciences, that 
Academical Students ordinarily fall upon."' 

At twelve he had been admitted to Harvard College. 
What the College was then like may be guessed from 
the " Laws, Liberties, and Orders " printed in the 
Appendix to Quincy's History of Hansard University.^ 
In brief, the students had to observe rules of pious de- 
corum inconceivable in the nineteenth century, and 
ultimately to prove their fitness for the bachelor's degree 
by showing that they could " read the original of the 
Old and New Testament into the Latin tongue, and 
resolve them logically." To be sure, human depravity 

1 "Your diligence is praiseworthy." 2 Vol. I. p. 515. 



36 COTTON MATHER. 

had so manifested itself among undergraduates as early 
as 1659 that the authorities of the College thought 
proper to authorize the town watch to keep order in 
the college yard. But in general whoever looks through 
the pages of Sibley's " Harvard Graduates " must feel 
sure that during the first half-century of its existence 
Harvard College to a rare degree fulfilled the purpose 
for which it was founded, and gave the Colonies a 
notably vigourous, learned, devoted ministry. In the 
" Magnalia " ^ Cotton Mather gives a catalogue of the 
Congregational ministers officiating in New England 
in 1696; he names one hundred and twenty-one; of 
these only eleven were not graduates of Harvard. 
Of his academic studies. Cotton Mather writes thus : 

" I composed Systems both of Logick and Physick, in 
Catachisins of my own, which have since been used by 
many others. I went over the use of the Globes., and pro- 
ceeded in Arithmetic as far as was ordinary. I made 
Theses., and Antitheses upon the main Questions that lay 
before me. For my Declinations I ordinarily took some 
Article of Natural Philosophy for my subject, by which 
contrivances I did Kill two birds with one Stone. Hundreds 
of books I read over, and I kept a Diary of my studies. 
My son I would not have mentioned these things, but that 
I may provoke your emulation." ^ 

Meanwhile his spiritual life had been growing. 

"I can't certainly remember," he writes,- "(having by 
an unhappy casualty ^ lost some of my records) when it was 
that I began to keep Days of Prayer with Fasting alone 
by myself. But I think it was when I was about fourteen 
years old. And I remember well That I made Mr. Scud- 
der''s Christian'' s Walk my Directory in those Duties." 

1 I. VII. - Paterna. ^ See page 271. 



HIS YOUTH. 37 

He notes that he was melancholy, and thought he 
had every distemper he read of. His self-conscious- 
ness was enhanced by what often afflicts people of 
active mind, — an impediment of speech. i He " had 
great benefit from a Society of Young Men, who met 
every Evening after the Lord's Day for the Services of 
Religion." Two other small facts about his under- 
graduate career are recorded in the Mather Papers : he 
sent to his uncle abroad a carefully drawn map of the 
region, wherein his uncle was surprised to find that the 
Blue Hills were not, as he remembered them, north of 
Boston ; and during some vacations he was invited to 
act as tutor to some kinsmen older than he. hX sixteen, 
he became a member of the Second Church. 

Slight enough these facts ; but they should help us 
to imagine what manner of boy it was who in 1678 
presented himself for the bachelor's degree. At that 
time he was the youngest who had ever applied for it 
at Harvard j to this day but two have applied younger.^ 
And this is what President Urian Oakes said to him in 
his Commencement oration : — 

" Alter vero Cottonus Matherus nuncupatur. Quantum 
Nomen ! Erravi, fateor, Auditores ; dicissem etenim, 
quanta Nomina ! Nihil ego de Reverendo Patre, Aca- 
demije Curatore vigilantissimo, municipii Academici socio 
primario, dicam; quoniam coram et in os laudare nolim ; 
sed si Pietatem, Eruditionem, Ingenium elegans, Judicium 
Solidum, Prudentiam et Gravitatem Avorum Reverendissi- 
morum Joannis Cottoni et Richardi Matheri, referat 

1 S. Mather, Life of Cotton Mather. 

■^ Paul Dudley, 1690, and Andrew Preston Peabody, 1826. 
Sibley, III. 6. 



:^S COTTON MATHER. 

et representet, omne tulisse Punctum dici poterit ; nee des- 
pero futurum, ut in hoc juvene CoTTONUS atq -. Matherus 
tarn re quam Nomine coalescant et reviviscant." ^ 

1 Sibley, III. 6, 7. — "The next is named Cotton Mather. How 
notable a name ! I am wrong, my friends ; I should rather have 
said what notable names ! I will say nothing of his reverend 
father, the most watchful of guardians, the most distinguished 
Fellow of the College : I dare not praise him here, to his very 
face. But if this youth bring back into being the piety, the learn- 
ing, the elegant accomplishment, the sound sense, the prudence, 
and the gravity of his very reverend grandfathers, John Cotton 
and Richard Mather, he may be said to have done his highest 
duty. Nor is my hope small that in this youth Cotton and 
Mather shall, in fact as well as in name, join together and once 
more appear in life." 



IV. 



The Fall of the Charter. — The Beginning of 
Cotton Mather's Ministry. 

1678-1686. 

The next eight years were among the most critical 
in the history of Massachusetts. From the settlement 
the Colony had been governed under a royal charter, 
granted to the Governor and Company of Massachu- 
setts Bay in 1629. Under this, as we have seen, none 
but church-members had been freemen. Church-mem- 
bers had elected all political officers ; they had estab- 
hshed their own system of law ; on their actions, and 
on their actions alone, rested everything in the rapidly 
strengthening community ; not so much as the title to 
an acre of land came from any other source. The re- 
lation of the Colony to the Crown, in short, was com- 
prised in the fact that the Crown had originally granted 
the Charter. As we have seen, the disturbed condi- 
tion of England during the Civil Wars and the Com- 
monwealth conspired with the original insignificance of 
the Colony to allow it virtual independence ; and its 
political history is that of a conflict between the theo- 
cratic and the democratic spirits inherent in its original 
constitution. 

A new factor had now appeared, however. Theoret- 
ically, New England, in virtue of its discovery by the 
Cabots, was the private property of the sovereign. Only 



I 



40 COTTON MATHER. 

the voluntary act of the sovereign, in the Charter, gave 
the colonists any rights at all ; their position resembled 
that of tenants on a private estate. And from the 
beginning the Charter had been contested by some 
gentlemen, who maintained that it was in violation of 
previous royal grants to them. Under Charles II. this 
attack was renewed, partly perhaps because New Eng- 
land was growing too prosperous to be let alone. Dur- 1 
ing King Philip's War there came to Boston for the " 
first time Edward Randolph, agent of the Lords of 
Trade, with a royal letter requiring the Governor and 
Assistants of Massachusetts at once to send representa- 
tives to England, there to answer the claims of those who 
contested the Charter. The contest thus begun lasted 
till 1684. Massachusetts fought to the death, but no 
diplomacy could save her. What is more, a party ap- 
peared in the Colony itself which favoured submission 
to royal authority. This party seems to have been built 
up chiefly by the exertions of Randolph, who constantly 
went back and forth from England, and achieved a pop- 
ular detestation not yet quite forgotten. At the head of 
the Royalists was Joseph Dudley, son of Thomas Dudley, 
second Governor of the Colony. In 1 684 came the end : 
the Court of Chancery vacated the Charter of Massa- 
chusetts. Without a government, without a single legal 
right, the Colony lay at the mercy of the Crown. It 
was the intention of Charles II. to send over as gover 
nor, vested with absolute authority, that Colonel Percy 
Kirk whose " Lambs " a few months later did such 
notable work in suppressing the traces of Monmouth's 
rebellion.^ But before anything definite was done, 



See Macaulay's History of England, Chapter V. 



THE FALL OF THE CHARTER. 41 

Charles was dead, James on the throne, Monmouth 
in arms, and Kirk busy cutting undefended throats. 
Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, one more election was 
held under the forms of the vacated charter : the last 
Governor elected by the people was Simon Bradstreet, 
who was likewise the last survivor of the magistrates 
who nearly sixty years before had founded the govern- 
ment now at an end. 

With these facts in view, certain dry notes in Sewall's 
Diary ^ grow dramatic. He tells how, on the 14th of 
May, 1686, the Rose frigate arrived at Nantasket ; how 
Randolph came to town by eight in the morning, and 
took coach for Roxbury, where Dudley lived ; and 
how, with other magistrates, he himself was summoned 
to see the judgment against the Charter with the Broad 
Seal of England affixed. He tells how, on the follow- 
ing Sunday, Randolph came to the Old South Church, 
where Mr. Willard in his prayer made no mention of 
Governor or government ; but spoke as if all were 
changed or changing. He tells how next day the 
General Court assembled, and how Joseph Dudley, 
temporarily made President of New England, exhibited 
the condemnation of the Charter and his own commis- 
sion under the Broad Seal of England ; how the old 
magistrates began to make some formal answer, and 
how Dudley said he could not acknowledge them as a 
court nor in any way capitulate with them ; and how, 
when Dudley was gone, a sorrowful group of the old 
magistrates decided that there was no room for a 
protest : " The foundations being gone what can the 
Righteous do?" He tells how Increase Mather with 
1 Vol. I. pp. 137-140. 



42 COTTON MA TITER. 

Other ministers vainly strove to persuade Dudley not 
to accept the presidency. And finally comes this 
note : — 

"Friday, May 21, 1686. The Magistrates and Deputies 
goe to the Governour's, . . . Mr. Nowell prayed that God 
would pardon each Magistrate and Deputies Sin. Thanked 
God for our hithertos of Mercy 56 years, in which time sad 
Calamities elsewhere, as Massacre Piedmont ; thanked God 
for what we might expect from sundry of those now set over 
us. I moved to sing, so sang the 17. and 18. verses of 
Habbakkuk.i The Adjournment . . . was declared by the 
weeping Marshall-General. Many Tears Shed in Prayer 
and at Parting." 

This dry note marks the end of the pristine govern- 
ment of Massachusetts. From that day to this church 
and state have been finally separate there. Until the 
American Revolution, the people never had a word in 
the choice of another Governor. The dream of the 
Puritans — the dream of a state governed only by the 
dictates of Scripture — had passed, with other dreams 
of men, into the region of things that may not be. 

For seven months Joseph Dudley was President of 
the provincial government of New England. On Sun- 
day, May 30, Sewall notes that he sang 
"the 141 Psalm . . . exceedingly suited to the day. 
Wherein there is to be worship according to the Church 
of England, as 'tis called, in the Town House, by coun- 
tenance of Authority." 

In August, he had grave doubts as to whether he 

1 Hab. iii. 17, 18. " Although the fig tree shall not blossom, 
neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall 
fail, and the fields shall yield no meat ; the flock shall be cut off 
from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: yet I will 
rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation." 



THE FALL OF THE CHARTER. 43 

could conscientiously serve in the militia under a flag 
in which the cross was replaced ; in Nov^ember, he 
finally resigned his commission as Captain of the South 
Company. On Saturday, September 25, the Queen's 
birthday had been celebrated with drums, bonfires, 
and huzzas. Next day, " Mr. Willard expresses great 
grief in 's Prayer for the Profanation of the Sabbath 
last night." 

On Sunday, December 19, while Sewall was reading 
to his family an exposition of Habakkuk, he heard a 
great gun or two which made him think Sir Edmund ^ 
might be come. Sure enough he was, " in a Scarlet 
Coat laced." That day the President went to hear 
Mr. Willard, who " said he was fully persuaded and 
confident God would not forget the Faith of those who 
came first to New England, but would remember their 
Posterity with kindness." Between sermons the Presi- 
dent went down the harbour to welcome Sir Edmund. 
The next afternoon Andros landed in state, and was 
escorted by the eight companies to the Town- House. 
Here his commission was read, declaring his power to 
suspend councillors and to appoint others, and vesting 
the legislative power in him and his Council. Then he 
took the oath of allegiance, and stood by with his hat 
on while eight councillors were sworn. The same day 
he demanded accommodation in one of the meet- 
ing-houses for the services of the Church of England. 
This was too much for the Puritans. At a meeting of 
the ministers and four of each congregation, it was 
agreed that they could not with a good conscience 
consent that their meeting-houses be made use of for 
^ Andros, the Governor appointed by James II. 



44 COTTON MATHER. 

the Common Prayer worship ; and " Mr. Mather i and 
Willard thorowly discoursed his Excellency about the 
Meeting-Houses m great plainess." So for a while 
Sir Edmund was content to worship at the Town- 
House. But Sewall notes, on January 25, that ''this 
day is kept for St. Paul, and the bell was rung m the 
Morning, to call persons to Service. The Governour 
(I am told) was there "; and on January 31 there was 
a similar service " respecting the beheading Charles 
the First." 

Meanwhile there had been minor symptoms of the 
change that was coming to New England. As early as 
November, 1685, 

*' the Ministers Come to the Court and complain against a 
Dancing Master who seeks to set up here and hath mixt 
Dances, and his time of Meeting is Lecture-Day; and 't is 
reported he should say that by one Play he could teach 
more Divinity than Mr. Willard or the Old Testament 
. . . Mr. Mather ^ struck at the Root, speaking against 
mixt Dances." Early in September, 1686, " Mr Shrimp- 
ton . . . and others come in a Coach from Roxbury about 
9 aclock or past, singing as they come, being inflamed with 
Drink : At Justice Morgan's they stop and drink Healths, 
curse, swear, talk profanely and baudily to tlie great dis- 
turbance of the Town and grief of good people. Such 
high-handed wickedness has hardly been heard of before in 
Boston." And though on Christmas day shops were " open 
generally and persons about their occasions,'' there was a 
sad affair on Shrove Tuesday: "Joseph Maylem carries a 
Cock at his back, with a Bell in 's hand, in the Main 
Street; several follow him blindfold, and under pretence of 
striking him or 's Cock, with great cart-whips strike passen- 
gers, and make great disturbance." 

^ Increase. 



THE FALL OF THE CHARTER, 45 

During these eight years the career of Increase 
Mather was steadily advancing. No figure was more 
conspicuous among those who resisted the change. 
We have seen how he vainly tried to dissuade Joseph 
Dudley from accepting the presidency of New England, 
and how he told Sir Edmund " in great plainness " that 
the meeting-houses of Boston should not be used for 
the rites of the Established Church. But we must turn 
to Cotton Mather for a full account of his life, public 
and private.^ In 1679 Increase Mather was among 
the leaders of that Synod which assembled to consider 
*' What are the Evils that have Provoked the Lord to 
bring his judgments on New England? and w^hat is to 
be done that so these Evils may be Reformed ? " A 
general revival followed, in which the earnest work of 
the preachers resulted in many renewed covenants 
with the Lord. A year later, on the verge of a severe 
illness, he was called to preside at a second meeting of 
the Synod, which formulated the elaborate Confession 
of Faith printed in the " Magnalia." ^ He "kept them 
so close to their Busifiess that in Two Days they dis- 
patch'd it : and he also Composed the Frce/ace to the 
Confession. On this he immediately took to his Bed 
under a dangerous fever." But, in accordance with 
many prayers of many good people, he recovered ; 
and preached his first sermon on the text, '' To me to 
Live is Christ." At the death of Urian Oakes, in 1681, 
he acted for a while as President of Harvard College. 
Four years later, after the death of John Rogers, he 
finally accepted the presidency. 

1 Parentator, Arts. XVIII -XXII. 

2 V.I. 



46 COTTON MATHER. 

It was in 1683 that the demand came from Charles 
II. that Massachusetts should '^ make ?i full Submission 
and entire Resignation of their Charter to his pleas- 
ure." At a meeting of the freemen of Boston, Increase 
Mather was invited to give them his thoughts on the 
Case of Conscience before them. 

"I verily Believe," he said, "We shall Sin against the 
GOD of Heaven if we vote an Affirmative. . . . Nor would 
it be Wisdom for us to Comply. We know, David made a 
Wise Choice, when he chose to fall into the Hands of 
GOD rather than into the Hands of Men. If we make a 
full Submission and entire Resignation to Pleasure, we shall 
fall into the Hands of Men Immediately. But if we do it 
not, we still keep ourselves in the Hands of GOD; we trust 
ourselves with His Providence : and who knows, what GOD 
may do for us?" — "Upon this pungent Speech," writes 
Cotton Mather, " many of the Freemen fell into Tears ; 
and there was a General Acclamation, We thank you ^ Syr / 
We thank you^ Syr I The Question was upon the Vote car- 
ried in the Negative, Nemine Contradicente. And this Act 
of Boston had a great influence upon all the Country." 

The next year came one of the most critical incidents 
of Increase Mather's life. A letter signed with his ini- 
tials and addressed to a friend in Holland was inter- 
cepted and brought to the notice of the authorities in 
England. It contained sentiments which, if not treason- 
able, were in the highest degree offensive to the King. 
Nothing could more seriously affect his public influence 
abroad. The Mathers always declared this letter a for- 
gery, which they attributed to Edward Randolph ; 
their enemies, then and now, have pronounced the 
letter genuine and the defence a lie. The question of 
veracity can never, perhaps, be satisfactorily settled. 



THE FALL OF THE CHARTER. 



47 



But a note on the subject from Increase Mather's diary 
seems to me honest : — 

" The Lord has had respect unto all the Wishes Written 
down before Him; on Jun. ii, 1670I — Yea he had so far 
Gratified my Desire of Suffering for Him, that my Name 
hath been cast forth as Vile, and Wicked Men in England. 
Scotland, Irelajid, Barbadoes, and the Leeward Islands, and 
elsewhere, have been Speaking all manner of Evil of me 
falsely. And the Ground of these my Sifferings has 
been, because I^ have desired to Approve myself faithful 
unto the Lord Jesus, and unto His Kingdom and Interest." 

A less depressing experience came on the 6th of 
February, 1685 ; at this time Kirk was expected as 
governor. 

''This Day," wrote Increase Mather, "as I was Pray- 
ing to God for the Deliverance of New-Ejigland, I was 
very much Moved and Melted before the Lord, so that for 
some time I was not able to speak a word. But then, I could 
not but say, GOD will deliver New-England ! GOD will 
deliver New-England! God will deliver New-England! 
So I rose from my knees, with much Comfort and Assurance, 
that God had heard me. These things, I hope, were from 
the Spirit of God. Before I Prayed, I was very sad, and 
much dejected in my Spirit ; but after I had Prayed, I was 
very Cheerful and joyful; I will then Wait iox the Salva- 
tion of GOD/'' 
Sure enough. Kirk never came to Massachusetts. 

It is during these eight years that we begin to have 
definite accounts of Cotton Mather's private life. 
Twehty-four of his diaries are preserved; and of 
these, four fall within this period.^ The diaries always 

1 Cf. page 26. 

■^ Those for 1681, 1683, 1685, and 1686; all in the possession 
of the ^Massachusetts Historical Society. 



48 COTTON MATHER. 

begin on his birthday; and as he begins the year, 
after the old fashion, on the ist of March, the first 
three weeks of each volume bear date of the year be- 
fore the rest of it. By far the greater part of the 
entries concern his spiritual experiences; yet among 
them are notes of other matters sufficient to giv^e us a 
pretty vivid notion of what manner of life he led. It 
is characteristic of Cotton Mather that, until 1711, 
none of the diaries are original copies. For some 
years he took the trouble to copy from his records 
such as he deemed worth preserving, and then to de- 
stroy the notes. But the presumption of error which 
this process raises is greatly weakened in my mind by 
the fact that his diaries, after he gave up the practice 
of revision, show no change in the general character 
of the entries ; and this is particularly true of one 
volume, which his third wife, who was occasionally in- 
sane, stole, and hid before it was finished, and which, 
apparently, he never saw again. 

Until 1 68 1 I find nothing concerning him beyond 
what his son tells. -^ Suffering from an impediment of 
speech, he at first believed himself unfitted for the 
ministry, and studied medicine ; but, following the ad- 
vice of a friend to "■ oblige himself to a dilated Deliber- 
ation in speaking," he "procured with Divine Help an 
happy delivery." On August 22, 1680, he preached in 
his grandfather's church, at Dorchester, his first sermon, 
in which, " because of the Calling he had rehnquished, 
he did . . . consider our blessed Saviour as the glori- 
ous Physician of Souls ; chusing those words for his first 
Text in Luke iv. 18. He hath sent me to heal the broken- 

1 S. Mather, Life of Cotton Mather, 26, 27. 



THE FALL OF THE CHARTER. 



49 



heartedy Just six months later he was unanimously 
invited to assist his father at the Second Church. 

This was his occupation during 1681, the year cov- 
ered by his first extant diary. The notes in this con- 
cern little but spiritual experiences. The first is a 
long devotional passage, full of good resolutions, 
" penned by Cotton Mather, a Feeble and worthless, 
yett [Lord by thy Grace] desirous to approve himself 
a Sincere & Faithful Servant of Jesus Christ." On the 
following Sabbath, 

" The Singular Assistencies which the God of Heaven 
gave unto mee, in my public ministrations . . . were such 
as caused me to draw up this conclusion: I believe I shall 
have a Glorious Presence of God with me through my 
whole Ministry.''^ And about this time he was gratified 
by a subscription of seventy pounds, "for my Encourage- 
ment in my public service the ensuing year." 

On the 13th of March, "in the Assurances, the glo- 
rious and Ravishing Assurances of the Divine Love, 
my joyes were almost insupportable." On the 19th, 
he was depressed ; on the 3d of April, he was again 
ecstatic ; on the 8th, he suffered from a " silence of 
God" in prayer- time — a punishment for "an Idle 
Fraud of Soul"; on the loth, he recovered his poise 
of temper : " If it be thy Will," he wrote, " I would 
live, to do some Special Service for thee, before I 
shall go hence and bee no more seen." I cite this 
experience in some detail, because its course and period 
of emotional action and reaction is typical of what 
followed him throughout life. In March he was 

"taken with a violent /^/«, . . . which looked like a mes- 
senger of Death. Here I am/' he wrote; "Afflict mee; 



50 COTTON MATHER. 

Do what thou wilt with mee ; Kill mee ; for thy Grace 
hath made mee willing to Dy : Only, Only, Only, Help mee 
to Delight in thee, and to glorify thy dearest Name." 

Two months later, he had a toothache, which in- 
duced two reflections : — 

" I. Have I not sinned with my Teeth? ... By sin- 
ful, Graceless, excessive Eating. And by Evil Speeches, 
for there are Liberal Dentals used in them. II. This is 
an Old Malady, from which I have yett been free, for a 
considerable while, Lett me ask then : Have not I of late 
given way to some old Iniquity?" 

The iniquity which troubled him most seems to have 
been the one he mentions most definitely in October. 

" I desire to walk Humbly before the Lord, all my Dayes, 
in the Remembrance of the Lothsome Corruptions, which 
my Soul has been from my Youth polluted withal. Lord, 
Wherewithal shall a youfig man cleanse his way ? Altho' 
I have been kept from such Out-breakings of Sin, in Ac- 
tions towards others, as have undone many in the world, 
yett I have certainly been one of the Filthiest Creatures 
upon Earth." 

Another besetting sin was revealed to him in June. 
A good woman told him how one of his sermons had 
convinced her that she had fallen into the sin of pride. 
Reflecting that pride is " the sin of young ministers," 
he straightway discovered it in himself. A day of pas- 
sionate prayer followed, which the Lord was pleased to 
reward with " glorious Assurances that Hee would never 
Leave the Work which Hee had begun in my soul." 
A week later came a day of secret Thanksgiving. 
" Oh Lord,^' he wrote, '^ Not unto mee, Not unto mee, but 
unto thy Name is All, All^ All the Glory due ; and thou 



THE FALL OF THE CHARTER. 51 

shalt have it. There shall Hallelujahs be sung to thee 
forever and ever " — for the " great works " which Cot- 
ton Mather, thus freed from the sin of pride, shall ac- 
complish. But before he closes this grotesque day, he 
earnestly thanks God, too, for " the Life and Health of 
my dear Father, whom I may reckon among the Richest 
of my Enjoyments." 

Meanwhile, several of his experiences had been com- 
forting. In May, a man whom he had warned of Divine 
displeasure for not joining a church, fell off a roof, 

"and received a Blow, whereof he Lay, for some while, as 
Dead. But coming to himself one of the first things he 
thought on, was what I had said unto him ; under the sense 
whereof, hee quickly went and joined himself unto the South 
church " 

In October, he preached in the pulpit of his Grand- 
father Cotton, 

" with a very singular Assistance of the Lord. Yea, such 
was his powerful presence with mee, that some afterwards 
declared their melted and Broken Hearts could hardly for- 
bear crying out in the Assembly." 

About the same time, he fixed on certain habits of de- 
votion which he found permanently edifying: one was 

"to start the day with a Scripture . . . which might be of 
some special consequence to my everlasting Interests"; 
and his first meditation was on Zech. 13 i,^ "cast into 
Three Observations. The Blood oi the Lord Jesus Christ 
is fitly compared unto a Fountain. This is an Open Foun- 
tain. And, the End of it is, for the Washing away of Sin, 
which is Uncleanness." 

1 '* In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house 
of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for 
uncleanness." 



52 COTTON MATHER. 

A little earlier he had had a still more comforting 
experience ; — 

"As 1 was in Meditation . . . How I might glorify God? 
I happened to Look thro' the window upon the Heavens ; 
and this Thought was after a most powerful and Refreshing 
manner cast into my mind, Surely, If the Lord intended 
not forever to glorify mee in Heaven, Hee would never 
have put it into my Heart, that I should seek to Glorify 
Him on Earth.*' 

But perhaps his most characteristic experience in 
1 68 1 was this : — 

"I bought a Spanish Indian; and bestowed him for a 
Servant on my Father. This Thing I would not Remem- 
ber . . . but only because I would observe whether I do 
not hereafter see some Special and Signal Return of this 
Action. ... I am secretly persuaded, That I shall do so !''' 

In the course of his life he had a great many secret 
persuasions and particular faiths : this is the first he 
records. In the " Magnalia " he defines them : — 

*' Good men, that labour & abound in prayer to the great 
God, sometimes arrive to the assurance of a particular 
faith for the good success of their prayer. . . . Many a real 
Christian ... is a stranger to . . . this thing ; ... it is here 
& there a Christian, whom the sovereign grace of Heaven 
does favour with the consolations of a particular faith. . . . 
The luondrous 7neltiiigs, the mighty wrestlings, the quiet 
waitinos^ & the holy resolues^ that are characters of a 
particular faith, which is no delusion, are the works of the 
Holy Spirit, wherein his holy angels may be instruments." ^ 

A particular faith which proved no delusion, then, was 

above most things else an assurance of election : it 

was, as it were, a momentary sharing of the foresight of 

1 IV. II. I. §6. 



THE FALL OF THE CHARTER. 53 

God. To justify his faith about the Spanish Indian, 
Cotton Mather had to wait sixteen years : then a knight 
whom he had laid under many obligations bestowed a 
Spanish Indian on him.^ 

The actual facts he noted this year are few. On 
August 9th, 

" I took my Second Degree, proceeding iVIaster of Arts. 
My Father was president, so that from his Hand I Re- 
ceived my Degree. Tis when I am gott almost Half a 
year beyond Eighteen in my age. And all the circum- 
stances of my Commencement were ordered by a very 
sensibly kind providence of God. My Thesis was, Puncta 
Hebraic a sunt Origin is Diviner^ •^ 

In October he was active in forwarding a plan, 
objected to by some as superstitious, that devout people 
should devote a given hour every Monday to prayer for 
persecuted churches abroad. In November he declined 
a call to New Haven. Towards the end of December, 
he was elected pastor of the Second Church, with a 
salary of seventy pounds. In February, 1682, he again 
refused a call to New Haven. 

" My Reason was, because the Church of iXorth Boston 
would have entertained uncomfortable Dissatisfactions at 
my Father, if after so many Important Votes of Theirs for 
my Settlement here, he had anyway permitted my Removal 
from them." 
He remained minister of the North Church all his life. 

"Horae plusquam amoenae, nunquam rediturae,"^ 
is the motto of his diary for 1683. From now on, each 

' S. Mather, Life, etc., p. 12. 

2 Hebrew vowel points are of divine origin. 

3 "More than delightful hours, never to return." 



54 COTTON MATHER. 

of his diaries bears some motto on the outer leaf; and 
begins with a devout and generally searching birthday 
meditation. Towards the middle of the year he copied 
one of his original notes which shows the course of his 
daily life : — 

" 28 d. 6in. Legi Exod. 34, 35, 36 | Oravi | Examinavi 
adolescentes | Legi Cartesium | Legi Commentatores in Joh. 
6. 37 I Jentacul | Paravi concionem | Oration! interfui Do- 
mestica | Audivi pupillos Recitantes | Legi Salmon phar- 
macop : I pransus sum | Visitavi plures Amicos | Legi Varia 
I Paravi concionem | Audivi pupillos Recitantes | Meditat: 
On, the exceeding Willingness of the Lord Jesus Christ to 
Do good iDito them that come 7(ftto Him. And, I Resolve 
As to be Encouraged in my Addresses unto the Lord Je- 
sus for His Mercy from the Thoughts of his mercifulness, 
then also the Endeavor that I may be Like unto Him in 
Humble and Ready Helpfulness to others | Oravi | Coe- 
navi j paravi Concionem | Orationi interfui Domestica."^ 

He made, and often put in practice, any number of 
good resolutions : some concerning other people, as to 
encourage rich gentlemen to support a country minister, 
and to pay an old hawker to distribute good books ; 
some more personal, as to govern his speech carefully, 
to close visits with some suitable text of Scripture, and 
to contrive " what Noble Attainments I should be 
continually purposing of." In pursuance of this last, 
he writes : — 

^ Read Exodus, etc. : Prayed: Examined the children: read 
Descartes : read commentators, etc : breakfasted : prepared 
sermon : took part in family prayer : heard pupils recite : read 
Salmon on medicine : dined : visited many friends : read vari- 
ous books : prepared sermon : heard pupils recite : meditated, 
etc.: prayed: supped: prepared sermon: took part in family 
prayer. 



THE FALL OF THE CHARTER. 55 

" While I was lying on my Couch in the Dusk of the 
Evening I extempore composed the following Hymn, which 
I then sang unto the Lord." A typical stanza runs : 
" I will not any Creature Love 

But in the Love of Thee Above . . . 

" I designed rather pietie than poetrie in these lines." 

He comments on them in three closely written pages. 

He hit upon a device of fining himself for any 
misconduct : — 

" Thus I Laid a penalty for some while upon myself. 
That if in Joining with the prayers of another, I did Lett 
more than one entire Sentence pass me, at any Time, with- 
out annexing some Ejaculation pertinent thereunto, I would 
forfeit a piece of money to be given unto the poor. And I 
found this effect of it, that in a Week or Two, I had Little 
occasion to Lay xws penalty j for I found my Distractions 
in my Duties, which had been my plague, most wonderfully 
cured." 

During an evening walk, when he 

"had such a prospect of our Neighbourhood as gave rnee to 
see that God had cast my Lot, in a place exceedinglyjz^^^;/- 
/^//j-, I found my Heart, after a more than ordinary manner 
melted in Desires after the Conversion and Salvation of the 
Souls in this place. And my soul was afterwards exceed- 
ingly Transported, in prayers for such a Mercy." 

Praying over a friend critically ill, 

"the good man felt, as it were, a Load or Cloud, beginning 
to Roll off his Spirits ; and from that Instant, unto his own 
admiration, he began to Recover. . . . Oh ! my Soul, why 
dost thou forgett such Benefits ! " In July, " Overlooking 
the addresses of persons to join unto the church, I found 
over Thirty Seals of my ministry in this place. . . . From 
whence I may form ?^ probable covipiitation of many Scores, 
that have here and elsewhere been thereby helped in their 



56 CO 7^ TON MATHER. 

acquaintance with the Lord. Blessed be God." At a 
young people's thanksgiving late in the year, "the Lord 
helped mee to preach unto them almost Three Hours (tho' 
I had Little more than One Hour's Time to prepare for it). 
. . . And a good Day it was !" 

Two little incidents this year impressed him much. 
His father admiring his watch, he gave it to him; 
shortly afterwards a gentleman from whom he " had no 
reason to expect such a visit " gave him a better one : 
an experience which induced a resolution to stir up 
dutifulness to parents in himself and others. And a 
gentleman imported a seal for him, which was lost in a 
fire, but subsequently found in the ruins. 

"I prayed herewithal," he writes, "That by no Fire^ 
neither the Fire of Liist here, nor the Fire of Hell here- 
after I might miss of the promise which the Blood of the 
Lord Jesus Christ hath sealed.'' 

Far edifying as this year was, it was not without sor- 
rows. His baby sister Katharine died. And in July 
comes a note that shows a more intimate trouble : — 

" Using of sacred ^neditations (with mixed Supplications) 
at my waking minutes every morning in my Bed, and in this 
Course going over many portions of the Scriptures a Verse 
at a Time, the Thought of Lsaac having his happy Consort 
brought unto him when and where he was engaged in his 
Holy Meditations, came sometimes into my mind, and I had 
sometimes a strange persuasion, That there would a Time 
come, when I should have my Bed Blessed with such a 
Consort given unto mee, as Isaac, the Servant of the Lord, 
was favoured withal." 

In December he found Satan buffeting him with 
unclean temptations. 

"Besides my . . . usual . . . Devotions,"' he writes, "I 



THE FALL OF THE CHARTER. 57 

did this Day write after this manner, That I may pluck 
out my Right Eye, and cutt off my Right Hand. ... Oh ! 
Blessed Saviour, Save me from the horrible pitt." 

He prayed and fasted assiduously ; but a month later 
the same ''Sorrowful and Horrible Vexation" tormented 
him again. About the same time an elderly minister 
violated the Seventh Commandment : Cotton Mather 
fasted and prayed more than ever. 

" I likewise carried the wounded minister in my prayers 
unto the Lord for all reasonable mercies." 

At the very end of the year, he began to fear that he 
had carried his mortification of the flesh so far as to 
violate the Sixth Commandment : — 

"'T is well, if I escape a Consumption. . . . What! Are 
my Duties now but Murders ? Lord, pardon niee and pitty 
mee, for the sake of Jesus Christ ! " 

The record of the year closes with a long list of the 
ejaculatory prayers he accustomed himself to utter on 
all occasions : a typical one is this : — 

" On the Gentlewoman that carv'd for the Guests : ' Lord, 
. . . Carve a rich Portion of thy Graces and Comforts to 
that Person ! ' " 1 

He was the grandson of John Cotton and Richard 
Mather, the son of Increase Mather, sprung from a 
race of the chosen vessels of God, himself a chosen 
vessel ; and he was just twenty-one years old. 

The diary for 1685 finds him approaching ordina- 
tion. In April there was some trouble about it, which 
led him to pray that if his life were a real prejudice to 

1 S. Mather, Lite, p. 107. 



58 COTTON MATHER. 

God, or a necessary occasion of strife and sin, he might 
be taken out of the world. But the " design of Satan " 
was frustrated by " a most uniting work of God upon 
the Spirits of the people." From the 22d of April to 
the 3d of May he was in a state of sustained ecstasy ; 
on the 4th of May came reaction, and on that day he 
wrote and signed his formal covenant with God : — 

" I renounce all the Vanities and Cursed Idols & Evil 
Courses of this World," it runs. " I engage That I will 
ever have the Great God my Best Good, my Last End, and 
my only Lord. That I will ever bee Rendering of Ac- 
knowledgments unto the Lord Jesiis Christ in all the 
Relations which Hee bears unto mee. That I will ever 
bee studying what is my Dutiem these things; and wherein 
I find myself to fall short, I will ever make it my grief\ my 
Shame., and for pardon betake myself unto the Blood of 
the Everlasting Covenant. Now, Humbly Imploring the 
Grace of the Mediator, to bee Sufficient for mee, I do as 
a further Solemnitie, hereunto subscribe ray Name with 
both Hajid and Heart '^ 

His signature to this document is more than twice the 
usual size. 

On the 13th of May he was finally ordained, in a 
frame of mind adequately expressed by his covenant. 
Sewall was present. 

" Mr. Cotton Mather is ordained Pastor by his Father." 
he writes,^ " who said, My son Cotton Mather, and in 's ser- 
mon spake of Aaron's Garments being put on Eleazar, 
intimating he knew not but that God might now call him 
out of the World. Mr. Eliot '-^ gave the Right Hand of 
Fellowship, calling him a Lover of Jesus Christ." 

1 Diary, I. 76. 

2 The Apostle to the Indians See Magnalia, 111 III. 



THE FALL OF THE CHARTER. 59 

Samuel Mather adds a characteristic trait : — 

" A truly primitive Ordination! which he never . . . scru- 
pled tlie Validity of. After a curious Examination of most 
of the Fathers in the three first Centuries, he was verily 
perswaded that every 07te of them had been perverted and 
abused by designing Men to serve their own Ends, espe- 
cially in the Instance of OrdinatTon''' ^ 

Ten days later, Sewall notes a " private Fast," which 
gives a glimpse of the manners of the time : — 

" The Magistrates . . . with their wives here Mr. Eliot 
prayed, Mr. Willard preached. I am afraid of Thy judg- 
ments. — Text Mother gave. Mr. Allen prayed ; cessation 
half an hour. Mr Cotton Mather prayed ; Mr. Mather 
preached, Ps. 79. 9.2 Mr. Moodey prayed about an hour 
and half ; Sung the 79th Psalm from the 8th to the End -, 
distributed some Biskets, & Beer, Cider, Wine. The Lord 
hear in Heaven his dwelling place." 

How busy Cotton Mather was this year appears from 
a note he made in December : — 

" The Last Week of the month I preached on Lords- 
Day, Monday, Tuesday. Wednesday, Thursday in the same 
week Yea. several weeks I have in one week preached 
fi7:e times; and once I preached yfTy^- times in Two Days 
which came together.'' 

In the course of the year he preached above a hun- 
dred carefully written sermons. At the same time he 
was constantly engaged in parish visiting ; and, besides 
starting an elaborate method of Bible reading, and 
pursuing his studies, and devoting many days to prayer 

1 Life, p 18. 

- " Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of thy name : 
and deliver us, and purge away our sins, for thy name's sake." 



6o COTTON MATHER. 

and thanksgiving, he had a number of pupils. And 
not content with teaching these, he 

" did successively use to send for them, one by one., into his 
Study, and there in the most moving, soft, obliging, and yet 
most solemn and lively manner discourse with them about 
their own everlasting hiterests j and he would then bestow 
some good Books on them to further the Work of God 
. . . upon their Spirits: And . . . in every Recitation he 
would . . . make an Occasion to let fall some Sentence, 
which might have a tendency to promote the Fear of GOD 
in their Souls." ^ 

His private devotions meanwhile were more pro- 
longed and more ecstatic than ever; his emotional 
condition throughout the year was more and more 
overwrought. And for this there were several reasons : 
besides being constantly impressed with the solemnity 
of the ordination which made him at last a fully 
equipped minister of the Gospel, and an Overseer of 
Harvard College, he suffered, as did Massachusetts, 
from not a few buffets of Satan. In August, his sup- 
plications were 

" especially to seek for the guidance and Blessing of God in 
what concerns the change of my condition in the world, 
from Single to married ; whereto I have now many in- 
vitations." 

In October, a similar state of mind recurred, slightly 
complicated by the fact that, like his father, he was 
quite willing to die for the salvation of any soul. Early 
in November, he was more concerned about matrimony 
than ever : he wanted to do God's will ; if celibacy 
were God's will, he accepted it ; but he vowed that, 
1 S. Mather, Life, p. 40. 



THE FALL OF THE CHARTER. 6l 

if Ciod would permit him to marry, he would always 
keep two annual thanksgivings with his wife. Late in 
January came another fast, very similar, more intense. 
Meanwhile the scope and variety of his good resolu- 
tions, of his thanksgivings, of his self-searching med- 
itations, are bewildering. And he had not a few 
assurances of Divine presence with him. 

The most remarkable of these was apparently con- 
nected in his mind with those public affairs which this 
year were so troublesome. Some of his records con- 
cern these. In May, when James II. was proclaimed, 
two friends happened in as he was busy with a private 
fast. 

" I preached unto my Two Friends," he writes, " Three 
Sermons each of them about an Hour Long apeece, on a 
Text, which was the very first, that on the opening of my 
Bible for a subject of Meditation, came to sight: namely 
Psal. 109. 19. 20,1 which proved wonderfully suitable." 

All three resolved to do special services for Christ, if 
He would relieve His people from the distresses now 
upon them. In September, the " calamities & confu- 
sions of the English Nation " caused him to be called 
daily an hour earlier than usual, that he might " Retire 
for Sighs, and prayers, and psalms, to bee employed for 
the distressed churches of God " : within a fortnight 
after tidings of the Lord's victory, he vowed he would 
keep a special day of thanksgiving, and ponder other 
acknowledgments. Late in January comes the follow 
ing retrospective note : — 

^ " Let it be unto him as the garment which covereth him, and 
for a girdle wherewith he is girded continually. Let this be the 
reward of mine adversaries from the Lord, and of them that speak 
evil against my soul." 



62 COTTON MATHER. 

" The Glorious Assurances which I have enjoyed and 
uttered, very many times, for now some years together, 
about the Lords Appearing to dehver His people from 
Impending Desolations are now answered That monster 
Kirk, who was coming to N. England with a Regiment of 
Red Coats., to sacrifice the best Lives among us, is diverted 
from coming hither, by the happy Death of that greater 
Monster, K. Charles IL And with K. James IL Things 
are operating towards such a Liberty for the Dissenters as 
may for aught I know bring the Resurrection of the Lord^s 
witnesses : it being just three years and a half since their 
Congregations were all Dissipated, and a Thanksgiving z^\- 
ebrated thro' a wicked nation for it. Wherefore Lett me 
now procure as many Dayes of praise as I can among the 
meetings with whom I have had so many Dayes of prayer 
on these occasions." 

This entry bears no date. The one before it, dated 
January 27, relates a prolonged thanksgiving, which 
closes with a consideration of what services Cotton 
Mather shall render to the Lord for His mercies to 
himself and to New England : in particular, he con- 
cludes, he should " immediately procure some Testi- 
mony, against some Common and growing Evils, which 
offend him in the land." A note of Sewall's throws 
some light on this entry and the next : — 

"Jan. 2oth. . . . Cousin Fissenden tells me there is a 
Maid at Woburn who 'tis feared is Possessed by an evil 
Spirit." 

On the 6th of February, 1685-6, Cotton Mather 
wrote as follows : — 

" It will cost mee very Bitter Toyle and paines yett per- 
haps I may bee very serviceable in it: If I procure to my- 
self an Exact Account of those Evil Humours, which the 



I 



THE FALL OF THE CHARTER. 63 

place is at any Time under the observeable Dominion of. 
And, whereas those Divels may bee cast out by Fasting 
and prayer, sett apart (first) a Day of Secret prayers with 
Fasting on the occasion of each of them ; to Deprecate my 
own guiltiness therein, and sicpplkate for such Effusions 
of the Spirit from on High, as may Redress, Remove, and 
Banish such Distempers fron tJie place.'''' 

We have seen enough of Cotton Mather now, I think, 
to understand at once the tremendous reality to him, 
and the bearing on what we have just read and on 
what is coming, of the record I shall copy next. It 
bears no date ; it is written on the inner side of the 
cover — the first leaf — of the diary for 1685 : — 

" Res Mirabilis et Memoranda. Post Fusas, Maximis 
cum Ardoribus, Jejunisqu;, Preces, apparuit Angelus. qui 
Vnltnin habuit solis instar Meridiani micantem: Caetera 
Hiiniamini, at prorsus imberbem : Caput magnifica Tiara 
obvolutum : In Humeris, Alas : Vestes deinceps Candidas 
et Splendidas: Togani nempe Talarem : et Zonatn circa 
Lumbos, Orientalium cingulis non absimilem. Dixitqu; 
hie Angelus, a Domino Jesu, se missum, ut Responsa 
cujusdam Juvenis precibus, articulatim afferat, referatqu : 
Quamplurima retulit hie ^;/^^//^j-, quae hie Scribere non fas 
est. Verum inter alia memoratu digna ; Futurum Hujusce 
Juvenis Fatum optime posse exprimi, asseruit in illis Vatis 
Ezekielis verbis. Ezek. 31 : 3, 4, 5, 7, and 9 Behold 
hee was a Cedar in Lebajion, with fair branches, and with 
a Shadoiving Shrowd and of an High Stature, and his 
Top was a?nong the Thick Boughs. The waters ifiade him 
great, the Deep Sett him up on High with her Rivers 
runtting about his plattts. His Heighth was Exalted 
above all' the Trees of the Field, and his Boughs were jnulti- 
plied, and his Branches became Long, because of the Mul- 
titude of Waters when he shott forth. Thus was hee fair 
in his Greatness, in the Length of his Branches, for his 



64 COTTON MATHER, 

Root ivas by the Great Waters. Nor was any Tree in 
the Garden of God like unto hitn in his Beauty. I have 
made him fair by the multitude of his Branches^ so that 
all the Trees of Eden, that were in the Garden of God, 
Envied hifn. Atqu : particulariter clausulas de Rationis 
ejus extendendis, exposuit hie Angelus, 6.Q Libris 2iO hoc 
Juvene componendis, et non tantum in America,, sed etiam 
in Europa, publicandis. Additqu : peculiares quasdam 
praedictiones, et pro Tali ac Tanto peccatore, valde mira- 
biles, de Operibus Insigfiibus, quae pro Ecclesia Christi in 
Revolutionibus ]2ivs\ Appropinquantibus, Hie Juvenis olim 
facturus est. Domijie Jesu ! Quid sibi vult haec res tarn 
Extraordinaria ? A Diabolicis Illusionibus, obsecro te, 
Servum Tuum Indignissimum, ut Liberes et Defendas ! "^ 

Thus we find him at the close of his twenty- third 

1 " A strange and memorable thing. After outpourings of 
prayer, with the utmost fervour and fasting, there appeared an 
Angel, whose face shone like the noonday sun. His features 
were as those of a man, and beardless ; his head was encircled 
by a splendid tiara ; on his shoulders were wings ; his gar- 
ments were white and shining; his robe reached to his ankles; 
and about his loins was a belt not unlike the girdles of the 
peoples of the East. And this Angel said that he was sent 
by the Lord Jesus to bear a clear answer to the prayers of 
a certain youth, and to bear back his words in reply. Many 
things this Angel said which it is not fit to set down here. But 
among other things not to be forgotten he declared that the 
fate of this youth should be to find full expression for what in 
him was best : and this he said in the words of the prophet 
Ezekiel, etc. . . . And in particular this Angel spoke of the in- 
fluence his reason should have, and of the books this youth should 
write and publish, not only in America, but in Europe. And 
he added certain special prophecies of. the great works this 
youth should do for the Church of Christ in the revolutions that 
are now at hand. Lord Jesus ! What is the meaning of this 
marvel ? From the wiles of the Devil, I beseech thee, deliver 
and defend Thy most unworthy servant." 



THE FALL OF THE CL/ARTER. 65 

year : the youth in whom Cotton and Mather have 
joined and shown themselves once more in Ufe ; a 
minister so busy that it is still a marvel how he found 
time for half the things he did ; torn by emotions 
that he believed to come now from (iod, now from 
Satan, — never from anything less ; bound by covenant 
to do great works for the God who had answered his 
prayers for New England ; assured by a celestial visit- 
ant that his works shall be fruitful ; and with his 
thoughts directed by a chance that might well seem 
providential to those visitations of the Devil — so 
strangely akin to his own visitations from heaven — 
that the doctors of his time called witchcraft. He 
was very anxious to be married, too ; a fact which 
probably had more than he knew to do with his state 
oi mind. 

For the year 1686, troublous enough to New ICngland, 
was a much more peaceful one for him. Almost his 
first note tells how he paid one of his first visits to a 
young gentlewoman, the daughter of worthy and pious 
parents in Charlestown, '' unto an Acquaintance with 
whom the wonderful providence of God, in Answer 
to many prayers directed " him. This was Abigail, 
daughter of the Honourable Colonel PhilHps. He 
writes at some length his notions of how godly his 
wooing ought to be. He notes how one Sunday he 
stayed at home from Charlestown, to preach, after the 
custom of the time, to a criminal,^ who was to be exe- 
cuted during the week, and was formally brought into 
church to hear his last sermon ; and how, as a re- 

1 James Morgan. See Sewall's Diary, I. in, 124-126; Mag- 
nalia^ VI. VI. App. (VII.). 

5 



66 COTTON MATHER. 



1 

■ver ■ 



ward, this sermon was published. Cotton Mather never 
lost the passion for seeing himself in print ; and this was 
apparently the first book he acknowledged : it was re- 
printed, with an appendix containing an account of his 
talk with Morgan on the way to execution. He notes 
later how he examined himself, and made sure that he 
really preferred Jesus to anything else, how he prayed 
for a comfortable habitation, hov/ he refrained from 
asking the church to raise his salary, how older min- 
isters asked him to join their prayer-meeting and 
met in his study. Then he tells how a young minister 
has been discipKned for some fall from grace, and 
prays that, if similar treatment of him may do God 
good, he may be similarly treated : " Here I am," he 
writes, " Do with me as Thou wilt." He notes how 
his heart goes out toward neighbours who have a 
low opinion of him ; he prays that he may not be a 
vessel of dishonour ; and that he may be very careful 
of other people's reputations. In short, he shows 
himself as thoroughly in love as an honest Puritan 
could be. 

The 4th of May was his wedding-day. He got up 
early, to ponder ; but in spite of his pondering he 
reached Charlestown ahead of time. So he repaired 
to the garden with his Bible, and read the second 
chapter of John,^ fetching "one observation and one 
supplication out of every verse in that story." Then 
the appointed time came, and " the good providence 
of God " caused his wedding " to be attended with 
many circumstances of respect and Honour, above 
most that have ever been in these parts of the world." 
1 The wedding at Cana. 



THE FALL OF THE CLIARTER. 67 

Next Sunday he preached at Charlestown ; the next, at 
Boston, on Divine Dehghts, stoutly asserting that after 
all the Bible was the most delightful thing in his 
experience. This was on the very Sunday when Mr. 
Willard " prayed not for the Governour " ; 1 next day 
Joseph Dudley assumed the Presidency. 

For several months Cotton Mather lived with his 
father-in-law, serene in mood and noting various prom- 
ises in Scripture which we should remember daily. 

"The methods of Religion," he writes, "which the 
Spirit of the Lord has heretofore taught me, were the most 
that now, for some considerable while, I contented myself 
withal. And I wish that thro' my slothful and carnal Dispo- 
sition, some of these also had not begun to wither with me." 

At length he moved to Boston, where he took 

" An House wherein jny Father Lived in the years 1677 
and 168 1 and wherein my more Childish Age made many 
Hundreds of prayers unto the God of Heaven. I could 
not but observe the providence of God, in Ordering my 
Comforts now, in those very Rooms where I had many 
years before sought him with my prayers." 

A year before, Mr. Shepard^ of Charlestown, being 
ill, had asked Cotton Mather to preach for him. " As 
for you, Syr," he had said after church, " I beg the Lord 
to bee with you unto the end of the world." That very 
night, to the consternation of all his friends, Mr. Shep- 
ard had died. In September, 1686, Cotton Mather 
had a startling dream : he dreamt he saw Mr. Shepard, 
whom he knew to have been dead for above a year. 

"On that account," he writes, " I was contriving I0 slip 
out of the Room; whereupon he nimbly coming up witJi 
1 Cf. page 41, 2 See Magnalia, IV. IX. 



68 COTTON MATHER. 

mee, took me by the Hand, and said, Syr, you need not 
he so skie of fnee,for you shall quickly be as I am, and 
where I am.'''' 

A short fit of iHness followed, in which Cotton Mather 
felt " the Foretastes and Earnests of Life Eternal.'' 

He recovered in a somewhat disturbed spiritual 
condition ; he had an excessive ecstasy, which made 
him resolve to be particular about the spiritual welfare 
of his dear consort and her father. He started some 
Sunday evening prayer-meetings, which outgrew his 
house, and which, for want of a colleague, he had 
finally to give up by reason of their very success. His 
last note for the year tells of a thanksgiving : he went, 
he writes, 

"from Room to Room in my house, Deliberately Look- 
ing upon the Distinct parcels of the Estate whereof 1 am 
now become the Owner, or as I would rather say, the 
Steward. And with a Ravished Soul, I gave Every Thing 
back to God, variously contriving and so Declaring How 
All that I have should bee made serviceable unto his 
glory." 

He formed numerous good designs this day, too : 
one was to be kind to the French refugees, but to stir 
them up about Sabbath-keeping ; another was to start 
certain gentlemen and certain religious families in 
prayer-meetings. x'Vnd he recorded two distinct res- 
olutions : — 

"I. The co?n7no7i-prayer worship now being sett up in 
this country I would procure and assist the publication of a 
Discourse written by my Father that shall enlighten the 
Rising Generation in the unlawfulness of that Worsliip, and 
Antidote them against Apostasy from the principles of the 



TEE FALL OF THE CHARTER. 69 

First Settlement. II. And I would prosecute the pub- 
lication of the Like Testimony against several other 
superstitions that are now creeping in upon the Rising 
ge7ieratio7iP 

Sir Edmund was Governor now, Joseph Maylem was 
making merry on Shrove Tuesday, and there \vere peo- 
ple abroad possessed of evil spirits. No one knew 
quite what was coming. '* And thus," closes the rec- 
ord, " the Good Hand of God brings mee to the end of 
my Twenty Fourth year." 



V. 

The Revolution of 1689 and the New Charter. 

1686-1692. 

Sir Edmund Andros, the new Governor, who came 
over vested with the absolute authority secured to 
James II. by the vacating of the Charter, was a gentle- 
man of Guernsey, whose youth had been passed in at- 
tendance on the King's aunt, the Queen of Bohemia. 
From 1666 to 1680 he had served in America, for the 
last six years of that period as Governor of New York. 
In this capacity he had come into collision with the 
authorities of Connecticut, who had disputed his claim 
to the country between the Connecticut River and the 
Hudson. And what happened then was enough to 
impress him and the people of New England with 
sentiments of mutual disgust. In point of fact, he 
seems to have been an honest gentleman, a good 
churchman, a man of the world, and a governor of no 
small ability.! But no temperament and no policy 
could have been much more foreign than his to 
the curious society, half theocratic, half democratic, 
that he came to govern with an authority more arbi- 
trary than has ever been assumed in New England, 
before or since. It is no wonder that, to theocrats 
and democrats alike, he seemed the incarnation of 

^ See Andros Tracts, I. Memoir of Sir Edmund Andros. 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1689. 71 

political villany, that in common opposition to him 
the theocratic spirit and the democratic forgot for a 
while any differences of their own, and that the miani- 
mous tradition of America has preserved his memory 
to the present day as that of a very bad man indeed. 

His jurisdiction was not confined to Massachusetts, 
but comprised the whole of New England. Boston, to 
be sure, by far the most important town in America, 
was his capital ; but here he exerted a power which 
extended from Canada to the Hudson. Putting aside 
the charges of extortion and corruption and treason- 
able plotting with Indians, — probably honesdy made, 
but certainly insufficiently supported by any extant 
evidence, — we may perhaps reduce the grave phases 
of what is still called his tyranny to three : an effort to 
establish the Church of England ; the assumption of 
the power of taxation without the consent of the peo- 
ple ; and the laying down of the principle, that all 
titles to land had been vacated along with the Charter, 
and so that whoever wanted a sound title must get his 
claim confirmed by Sir Edmund, and pay for it. When 
certain people pleaded the privileges of Englishmen, 
they were told that these things would not follow them 
to the ends of the earth, and that they had no more 
privileges left them but that they were not bought and 
sold for slaves. And this I see no reason to doubt that 
Sir Edmund very honestly believed. " In short," says 
Cotton Mather,^ '^ all was done that might be expected 
from a Ki}'k, Except the Bloody Part. But that was 
coming on." 

In all probability, the Mathers, along with most good 

^ Parentator, XXIII. 






72 COTTON MATHER. 

people of New England, honestly thought their heads 
in danger. That they really were, there is no evidence 
at all. But it is no wonder that so complete an over- 
turn of the government set all manner of wild fancies 
afloat. Increase Mather opposed Andros in every 
possible way, and meantime betook himself to prayer 
for good tidings out of England. 

" I sought unto God," be writes, early in 1687, ''in se- 
cret with Tears that He would send Reviving News out 
of Engla7id : And I could not but Believe that He will 
do so." 

He had not long to wait. In April, 1687, James II. 
issued his Declaration of Indulgence.^ Really de- 
signed, of course, to relieve the Catholics, this pro- 
claimed liberty of conscience, suspending all laws 
against non-conformity, and authorizing all British sub- 
jects to meet and serve God in their own way. How 
grateful it was to Dissenters, Cotton Mather's own 
svords characteristically express : — 



'*// b?-07(ght them out of their Graves: And if it as- 
sumed an Illegal Power of Dispensing with Laws, yet in 
Reladon to Them, it only dispensed with the Execution of 
such Infamous Laws as were ipso facto Null and Void be- 
fore : Laws contrary to the Laws of God, and the Rights 
and Claims of Human Nature." 

The ministers of New England were for a public 
thanksgiving, which Sir Edmund forbade, with threats 
of military force. On the motion of Increase Mather, 
the churches of New England drew up an address of 

1 See Sewall's Letter-Book, I. 52, note. 1 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1689. 73 

thanks to the King. This it was thought best to in- 
trust to some " Well-qualified Pefson^^ who " might, 
by the Help of such Profesta?it Dissenters as the King 
began upon Political Views to cast a fair Aspect upon, 
Obtain some ReHef to the Growing Distresses of the 
Country : and Mr. Mather was the Person that was 
pitch'd upon." He referred the question of his going 
to his church : " They that at another time would have 
almost assoon parted with their Eyes as have parted 
with him now were willing to it : They Unanimously 
Consented.'^ Randolph made an effort to stop him by 
bringing against him an action for libel, based on a 
letter in which Mather had intimated a belief that 
Randolph had forged the treasonable document signed 
with his initials in 1683.^ But Mather, having once 
been released by a jury, avoided a second arrest by 
slipping out of his house in disguise, and remaining 
for a little while in hiding at Colonel Phillips's, in 
Charlestown. On the 7th of April, 1688, he managed 
to board a ship, well down the harbour, and so bore 
away for England. On the 6th of May he landed at 
Weymouth. His church was left in charge of his son 
Cotton. Harvard College, of which he had been Presi- 
dent since 1685, was left in the hands of Leverett and 
Brattle, resident tutors, and Fellows of the Corporation. 
The story of Increase Mather's mission in England 
is told at length in the " Parentator," and has been 
admirably illustrated by the '' Andros Tracts." Taken 
from the midst of the petty colonial society of whose 
limits we should by this time have a pretty thorough 
notion ; placed in the midst of the turmoil, the bustle, 

^ Cf. page 46, 



74 COTTON MATHER. 

the intrigue, of a great capital and a corrupt court : 
taken from the post of an eminent leader in matters 
ecclesiastical and political alike ; placed where at best 
he was one of a multitude, struggling and plotting for 
the notice and the favour of the great, Increase Mather 
proved himself no common man. Hitherto, at least 
in the " Parentator," on which I have chiefly relied for 
my impressions of him, he has appeared as an honest, 
godly Puritan minister, doing his best to maintain the 
principles that are already becoming traditions. Now, 
without sacrificing a shade of his principle, without 
giving up those ecstatic prayers and afflations which 
whoever would understand the passionate enthusiasm 
of old Puritanism must always keep in mind, he shows 
himself able, in a rare degree, to conduct the affairs of 
men. In brief, his task was to persuade a Catholic 
King, full of belief in the Divine authority of his absolute 
power, to restore, of his free will, the vacated Charter 
of Massachusetts. On the 30th of May he presented 
the Addresses of Thanks to James II., thus for the 
first time fulfilling his mother's prophecy. ^ Two days 
later he had another audience with the King, who 
listened kindly to his complaints of the conduct of An- 
dres. It was James's purpose, Cotton Mather thinks,^ 
to set up the Roman Catholic religion in America. It 
was Mather's purpose to secure a restoration of the 
theocratic democracy of the fathers, and incidental! 
to procure for Harvard College a royal charter which' 
should permanently secure it to the Calvinistic dis 
senters who had founded and cherished it. These 



1 Cf. page 17. '^ Parentator, XXV. 



e 

I 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1689. 75 

purposes agreed in not being exactly those of poor 
Sir Edmund. James spoke kindly, but did nothing; 
Mather worked vigorously, using every influence he 
could command. 

On the 2 2d of November, 1688, Sewall sailed from 
Boston, partly for the purpose of joining Mather in 
London. His notes of the voyage are pretty full. 

" Friday, Dec. 21," runs one, " I lay a [wager] with Mr. 
Newgate that shall not see any part of Great Britain by 
next Saterday senight sunset. Stakes are in Dr. Clark's 
hand." He won his bet. Still at sea, on " Sabbath, Dec. 
30th. Spake with a ;?hip. Tells us he spake with an Eng- 
lish Man from Galloway, last Friday, who said that the 
King was dead, and that the Prince of Aurang had taken 
England, Landing six weeks agoe in Tor Bay. Last night 
I dreamed of military matters."' 

A fortnight more the voyage lasted, and each vessel 
they spoke gave some new version of the great ne\vs. 
In point of fact, WiUiam had landed on the 5th of 
November, James had fled from London on the 23d 
of December; and on "Sabbath, Jan. 13th," when 
Sewall finally went ashore at Dover, to " hear 2 Ser- 
mons from Isaiah, 66. 9," ^ the Revolution was accom- 
plished. Two weeks later, William and Mary were 
proclaimed. 

On the 4th of April, 1689, a young man named John 
Winslow arrived in Boston from the island of Nevis, 
with a copy of the Declaration issued by the Prince of 
Orange on his landing in England. Sir Edmund, hear- 

' " Shall I bring to the birth, and not cause to bring forth } 
saith the Lord : Shall I cause to bring forth, and shut the 
womb ? saith thy God." 



76 COTTON MATHER. 

mg the news, sent for him, and tried to silence him 
by threats and promises ; faiUng, he committed him to 
prison "for bringing traitorous and treasonable libels 
and papers of news." But it was no use. The people 
of Massachusetts were ripe for revolution. Palfrey tells 
the story very graphically.^ On the i8th of April, 
Boston rose in arms, seized the chief magistrates, be- 
sieged Sir Edmund in the Castle, dismantled the Rose 
frigate, and took possession of the government in the 
name of " His Highness " (the Prince of Orange) and 
" the English ParHament." To appreciate the full 
boldness of this bloodless revolution, we must remem- 
ber that no rumor of the Prince's fortunes had reached 
New England, and that every man of those who put 
themselves at the head of the movement knew that, 
if, as might well be, James had prevailed in England, 
their action would probably cost them their heads. 
For all this, the magistrates who had last served under 
the vacated Charter resumed the power provisionally. 
Samuel Mather ^ says that they did it lest inaction on 
their part should result in bloody work by less prudent 
leaders. It was their fortune to be justified by what 
had happened abroad. On the 26th of May, a ship 
arrived with orders to proclaim William and Mary ; 
on the 29th, they were proclaimed. And Sir Ed- 
mund, with Joseph Dudley and the rest of his crew, 
as Cotton Mather called them, were fast prisoners in 
Boston Castle. And absolute authority in New Eng- 
land had seen its last day. 

1 Book III. Chapter XV. 

2 Life of Cotton Mather, II 2 2. This passage is probably 
the most valuable historically in the lifeless book. 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1689. 77 

The next service that Increase Mather ^ did for 
New England was — at least for his contemporaries — 
perhaps the most notable of all. On the accession of 
William and Mary, a circular letter was drawn up to all 
the Colonies, confirming the old governors until fur- 
ther order. Had this been sent to New England, it 
would have reinstated Sir Edmund ; and how that hot- 
tempered gentleman might have conducted himself 
towards his enemies nobody knows. By some means, 
Mather succeeded in stopping it, and in leaving au- 
thority temporarily in the hands of the provisional 
government. In the end. Sir Edmund and his crew 
were shipped to England for trial. Far from con- 
demnation, they were received there with favour. Sir 
Edmund was soon made Governor of Virginia ; Joseph 
Dudley was made Chief Justice of New York, and later 
Lieutenant Governor of the Isle of Wight ; later still 
he became a member of Parliament. But New Eng- 
land saw Sir Edmund no more : as for poor Randolph, 
all we hear further of him is that he died in Virginia, 
so miserably that only two or three negroes attended 
his funeral ; ^ and Dudley for the moment had his 
hands agreeably full abroad. There is good reason, 
I think, to believe that this peaceable issue of what 
might have been a very tragic matter was due chiefly 
to Mather's diplomacy. 

There were now high hopes in New England that 
the Charters would be restored. To prove their loy- 
alty, the Colonies fitted out an expedition against Port 

1 For all facts about Increase Mather in the rest of this chap- 
ter, see Parentator, XXVI., XXVII. 

2 Parentator, XXIV. 



78 COTTON MATHER. 



lin- 11 



Royalj and temporarily annexed to the British domin 
ions the country that is now Nova Scotia. Encour- 
aged by this, they followed it by a still more formida- 
ble expedition against Quebec, under the command, 
like the former, of the redoubtable Sir William Phipps. 
But this armament came to grief in the St. Lawrence, 
going far to unmake the favourable impression estab- 
lished by the previous success. And the country was 
generally in a disturbed condition, doubtful as to what 
form its government might take, harassed on its bor- 
ders by French and Indians, and infested along the 
coast by the pirates whose traditional hoards still ex- 
cite the interest of credulous treasure-seekers. It is to 
this epoch, though not precisely to this moment, that 
we owe the fame of Captain Kidd. 

In England, meanwhile. Increase Mather — preach- 
ing, praying, making the best of his way among what 
Dissenters were in favour at court — was doing his ut- 
most to secure the restoration of the Charters. He 
waited on the King more than once, to be received with 
marked, though guarded civility. He waited on the 
Queen, when the King was gone to Holland, and, 
pressing the claims of the New England Dissenters, 
heard from her lips what Cotton Mather calls a " Divine 
Sentence " : "I wish all good men were of one mind ; 
however, in the mean time I would have them live 
peaceably, and love one another." But all he could 
do brought his business little further. WilHam of 
Orange was a good Calvinist, but no Republican : he 
was willing enough to say civil things to New England, 
but by no means disposed to make a prosperous part 
of his dominions virtually independent. The longer 



\ 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1689. 79 

Mather waited, the clearer it became to him, if not to 
his colleagues in the mission, that the best he could 
do for Massachusetts was to secure for it the best 
Charter he could induce the King to sign. The old 
Charter was hopelessly lost. 

Such was the state of affairs at the beginning of the 
year 1692, — the next for which Cotton Mather's diary 
is preserv'ed.^ What impressions I have of his per- 
sonal career for these five years, then, I gather from 
outside sources. In the first place, we shall do well to 
remember the situation in which he found himself at 
the age of twenty-five. Full of traditional belief in the 
Divine authority of his professional work, he was left, by 
the absence of his father on the most important pubhc 
business ever yet confided to a native of New England, 
in full charge of one of the greatest churches in Amer- 
ica. There is no reason to doubt that, according to 
the standard of his time, he was a scholar unapproached 
by any one of his age : that is, he had read more books 
than anybody else, he was reading more day by day, 
and he was already launched in that career of author- 
ship which made him at last the most voluminous of 
American writers. And the state of public affairs, 
bringing theocracy and democracy for the moment into 
complete accord, and throwing political as well as 
spiritual leadership once more — and for the last time — 
chiefly into the hands of the clergy, gave his words 
and actions such public authority as he never enjoyed 
again. All the while, too, there is every reason to 

1 In possession of the American Antiquarian Society. Occa- 
sional citations in print seem to show that some of the intermediate 
diaries may be preserved. But I have not come across them. 



8o COTTON MATHER. 

believe that his ecstatic prayers and fastings kept him 
in what he never doubted was direct communication 
with the angels of God. 

Sewall's Diary gives a few glimpses of his public 
preaching, and of pastoral visits all the more notable 
for the fact that Sewall was a member, not of Mather's 
church, but of Mr. Willard's, the Old South. One of 
his sermons, in 1687, taught Sewall a practical lesson 
of which he made immediate use. 

" Went to Roxbury/' runs Sewall's note,^ " and heard 
Mr. Cotton Mather preach from Coles. 4. 5, Redeeming 
the Time.2 Shew'd that should improve Season for doing 
and receiving good whatsoever it cost us. His Excel- 
lency ^ was on the Neck, as came by, call'd Him in and 
gave Him a glass of Beer and Claret and deliver'd a Peti- 
tion respecting the Narraganset Lands." 

Three years later, Sewall heard another of his ser- 
mons with less satisfaction. 

''March 19, 1690," he writes, "Mr. C Mather preaches 
the lecture from Mat. 24, and appoint his portion with the 
Hypocrites.* In his proem said, Totus inundus agit his- 
trionem.^ Said one sign of a hypocrit was for a man to 
strain at a Gnat and swallow a Camel. Sign in 's Throat 
discovered him ; To be zealous against an inocent fashion, 
taken up and used by the best of men ; and yet make no 

1 Diary, I. 181. 

2 " Walk in wisdom towards them that are without, redeeming 
the time." 

3 Andros. 

* Matt. 24. 51. "[The lord of that servant] shall cut him 
asunder, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites ; there 
shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." 

° Everybody plays a part. 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1689. 8 1 

Conscience of being guilty of great Immoralities. Tis sup- 
posed means wearing of Perriwigs : ^ said would deny them- 
selves in any thing but parting with an oportunity to do 
God service ; that so might not offend good Christians. 
Meaning, I suppose, was fain to wear a Perriwig for his 
health. I expected not to hear a vindication of Perriwigs 
in Boston Pulpit by Mr. Mather ; however, not from that 
Text. The Lord give me a good heart and help to know, 
and not only to know but also to doe his Will ; that my 
Heart and Head may be his." 

Of Cotton Mather's domestic life, meanwhile, I find 
but two or three stray notes. Three daughters were 
born to him before 1693 ; and one of them died. In 
1688, he was much excited by a case of witchcraft in 
Boston, and for a while had one of the possessed girls 
in his own house. The same year his brother Nathan- 
iel died, — a very godly youth, who, if we may trust 
the account of him which Cotton Mather published,^ 
systematically studied and worried himself to death. 
One of his notes, which Cotton Mather quotes, gives 
a curious insight into his character. He is lamenting, 
in terms which suggest all manner of misdeed, the sins 
of his boyhood. 

" Of the manifold sins which then I was guilty of," he 
goes on, "none so sticks upon me as that, being very 
young, I was whitling on the Sabbath-day ; and for fear 
of being seen, I did it behind the door. A great reproach 
of God ! a specimen of that atheism that I brought into 
the world with me." 

Samuel Mather ^ is the chief authority concerning the 

1 Cf. page 34. In his only existing portrait, Cotton Mather 
wears a remarkably full wig. 

2 Magnalia, IV. X. 3 Life, II. 2. 2. 



82 COTTON MATHER. 

part Cotton Mather played in the Revolution of 1689. 
Before the outbreak, he says, " the principal Gentlemen 
of Boston met with Mr. Mather to consult what was best 
to be done : and they all agreed, if possible, that they 
would extinguish all Essays in our People to an Insur- 
rection.'" In case of an outbreak, however, they deter- 
mined to prevent undue violence by putting themselves 
at the head of it. " And a Declaration was prepared 
accordingly." ^ At a public meeting of the inhabitants 
of Boston, shortly before the outbreak. Cotton Mather 
succeeded in calming the people by an " affectionate 
and moving Speech ... at which many fell into Tears 
and the whole Body . . . present immediately united in 
the Methods of Peace Mr. Mather proposed unto them." 
In spite of this he was to have been committed to prison 
for his politics on the very day when the insurrection 
broke out : on that day and the exciting ones that 
followed, he devoted all his energies, with success, to 
hindering " the Peoples proceeding any further than 
to reserve the Criminals for the Justice of the English 
Parliament." On the whole, Samuel Mather's last 
remark on this subject is the most notable. 

" Upon Discoursing with him of the Affairs," it runs, 
*'he has told me that he always pressed Peace and Love 
and Submission unto a legal Government, tho' he suffered 
from some tumultuous People, by doing so; and upon the 
whole, has asserted unto me his Innoce7icy and Freedom 
from all known Iniquity in that time, but declared his Reso- 
lution, from the View he had of the fickle Humors of the 
Populace, that he would chuse to be concern'd with them 
as little as possible for the future." 

1 See Andros Tracts, I. 20. This paper has been attributed 
to Cotton Mather. 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1689. S>T, 

Apart from this, I get my chief impression of him 
during this interval from the Hst of his works in Sib- 
ley's '' Harvard Graduates." Indeed, there are but 
two definite facts that I have noted from any other 
authority. One is, that on the 12th of June, 1690, he 
was elected a Fellow of Harvard College.^ I doubt if 
the Corporation has ever had a younger member.^ The 
other is, that in November of the same year, when 
there was a dispute between hot-tempered Sir William 
Phipps and his prisoner, M. de Meneval, the captured 
Governor of Port Royal, concerning certain moneys on 
which Sir William had laid hand, "Mr. Moody and 
Mr. Mather . . . had very sharp discourse ; Mr. Mather 
very angrily said that they who did such things as suf- 
fering Sir William to be corrected by Meneval were 
Frenchmen, or the people would say they were, etc." ^ 
Cotton Mather had a temper of his own, it seems, 
which sometimes got the better of him. But the more 
serious side of his personal life between 1687 and 1692 
shows itself chiefly in his writings. From " Military 
Duties" — a sermon preached in September, 1686, 
but not published till the next year — to the "Mid- 
night Cry," — the last of his publications during the 
period covered by this chapter, — Sibley mentions 
twenty-nine titles. Of these, one appeared in 1687, 
seven in 1689, ten in 1690, nine in 1691, and two in 
the beginning of 1692. Twenty of the twenty-nine 
were sermons, including some political sermons, and 
three funeral discourses, — two of which were enlarged 
into the biographies of Nathaniel Mather and of the 

^ Sewall's Diary, T. 322. 2 27 years, 4 months. 

3 Sewall's Diary, I. 339. 



84 COTTON MATHER. 

Apostle Eliot, which appeared again in the jMagnalia ; 
two dealt with the Quakers ; five concerned devotional 
matters in general ; and two — " Memorable Prov- 
idences," first published in 1689, and '^ Late Memo- 
rable Providences," pubHshed in 1691 — concerned 
witchcraft.^ From the moment that his glorious assur- 
ances were justified by the news that King Charles was 
dead and Kirk's coming averted in 1685, this matter 
seems to have been much on his mind. He was 
bound by covenant to do special work for the Lord, 
and here was special work to be done. 

So we come to that portion of his diary for 1692 
which belongs in this chapter. Like the other vol- 
umes I have noted, this one is not the original, but an 
abridged copy in his own hand of what portions he 
deemed worth preserving. And it is certainly true that 
the notes he has copied for this year are less specific 
and fewer than usual. To those who hate his mem- 
ory, and they are not few, this fact should count 
against him ; for my part, as I have said, the better I 
grow to know him, the more honest I believe his in- 
tentions. I shall note very briefly all that I have found 
in the earlier part of this manuscript volume. 

*'This year finds me," it begins, " in my public Ministry 
handling the Miracles of our Lord Jesus Christ. . . . 
Who can tell, what miraculous Things, I may see, before 
this year bee out ? " 

The next thing he notes is, that he has induced a 
meeting of ministers at Cambridge to vote that the 
churches shall make catalogues of " such things as can 

1 Increase Mather's " Remarkable Providences " had appeared 
in 1684. 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1689. S5 

indisputably bee found amiss among them," and then 
shall relentlessly put them down. Most of the churches 
paid little attention to this vote. But Mather himself 
drew up an instrument denouncing sixteen distinct 
common evils and transgressions of the covenant. He 
preached about this ; he wove it into his prayers ; and on 
the 2d of April it was adopted by a vote of the North 
Church. He had it printed, and conveyed the little book 
to every communicant. On the 29th of April, he held 
a day of secret humiliation and prayer. His prayers for 
the Holy Spirit were answered with assurances. He 
went on to recount the abasing circumstances of the 
land, to pray for the awakening of the churches, par- 
ticularly by himself; therefore he prayed above all for 
the smiles of God on his " Midnight Cry," "which was 
just then coming out of the press." He obtained of 
God an assurance that 

" Hee will make use of me, as of a John, to bee an 
Herald of the Lord's Kingdom now approaching. . . . But 
my prayers," he goes on, " did especially insist upon the 
horrible Enchantments and possessions broke forth upon 
Salem Village, — things of a most prodigious Aspect. A 
good issue to these things and my own Direction and 
protection thereabout I did especially petition for." 

His next note, undated, tells that his health is " lam- 
entably broken, . . . partly by my Excessive Toyle in the 
public and private Exercises of my Calling, but chiefly, 
I fear, by my Sins against the God of my Health." In 
spite of this, and of preaching when he " had been 
fitter to have been in my bed," he has had great assist- 
ances in the pulpit ; " and come easier out of the 
pulpit than I went into it." Whoever has had crazy 
nerves knows what that means. 



86 COTTONT MATHER. 

*' But now," he goes on, " Illnesse and Vapours, with an 
Aguish Indisposition, grows upon me at such a rate that 
indeed I Live in Exceeding Misery: and I can see nothing 
but a Speedy Death approaching. Blessed be God., that I 
can Dy I " 

" But the time for Favour was now come !" runs the next 
note I have copied, " the Sett Time was Come ! I am 
now to Receive the answer of so many prayers as had been 
employed for my absent parent ; and for the Deliverance 
and settlement of my poor Countrey, for which hee had 
been Employed in so long an Agencie. We have not the 
former Charter, but wee have a Better in the Room of it : 
one which much better suits our Circumstances. And in- 
stead of my being made a Sacrifice to Wicked Rulers, all 
the councellours of the province are of my own Father's 
Nomination," 

Among thenfi were his father-in-law and several 
brethren of his church. And the Governor was Sir 
William Phipps, one whom he himself had baptized, in 
March, 1690.1 

In fact, the four years' work of Increase Mather 
had reached a successful issue in October, 1691. 
Convinced that nothing could revive the old Charter, 
he had done all he could to make the new one as good 
as possible. The appointment of the Governor, and 
the final power of veto, were left with the King ; the 
franchise was made a matter no longer of church- 
membership, but of freeholds : but the people were to 
elect the Governor's Council ; and above all, the power 
of taxation was vested in the bodies they elected. 
Mather's colleagues refused to accept the inevitable : 
they came back to New England, ready to stir up feel- 
1 See Magnalia, Life of Sir William Phipps. 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1689. 87 

ing against him. And Sewall notes that as early as 
February 8, 169 1-2, when the first copy of the new 
Charter reached Boston, there was much discourse. 
But Mather's diplomatic tact had actually enabled him 
to name the chief officers who were to put the gov- 
ernment into operation ; and the good man came 
home to his good son with the full conviction that 
now at last good people were to have their way in 
New England. 

"May 14th, 1692," writes Sewall, "Sir William arrives 
in the Nonsuch Frigat : Candles are lighted before he 
gets into Town-house. Eight companies wait on Him to 
his house, and then on Mr. [Increase] Mather to his. 
Made no volleys because 'twas Satterday night." 

Next day, though ill and unprepared, Cotton Mather 
preached on "the Lord's passing over the water," 
with much assistance from Heaven. 

" Monday, May 16;' writes Sewall, ' Eight Companies 
and two from Charlestown guard Sir William and his 
Councillours to the Townhouse, where the Coiiiissions 
were read and Oaths taken. I waited on the Dept. Gov- 
ernour to Town, and there was met by Brother Short . . . 
who informed me of the dangerous illness of my father, 
so ... I was not present at the Solemnity: found my 
father much better. At Ipswich,i as we were going, saw 
a Rainbow just about Sunset." 

"Thus," writes Cotton Mather the same day, "have 
I seen the wonderful effects of prayer and Faith ; and 
now I will call upon the Lord as Long as I Liv£." 

1 The elder Sewall lived at Newbury. 



VI. 

Witchcraft. 

1692-1693. 

What happened in the next two years was of less 
consequence to New England than the matters we 
have been considering. To Cotton Mather, however, 
and to the cause which throughout his hfe he had 
most at heart, — the preservation, the restoration, of 
the pure polity of the fathers, — these two years were 
fatal. It was the great tragedy of witchcraft, I think, 
that finally broke the power of theocracy : it was 
almost surely the part Cotton Mather played in it that 
made his life, for the five and thirty years that were 
left him, a life — at least publicly — of constant, cres- 
cent failure. Tragic even if we join with those who 
read in the records left us no more worthy story than 
that of frustrated ambition, his career takes an aspect 
of rare tragic dignity if in his endless, undiscouraged 
efforts to do God's work we can honestly see what he 
tells us was there, — an all-mastering faith that the 
fathers were divinely right, that all which tended away 
from their teaching was eternally wrong, and that his 
own failure meant nothing less than the failure of the 
kingdom of Christ in a land whither Christ's servants 
had come with high hopes that here, as nowhere else 
on earth, Christ's kingdom should prevail. 



WITCHCRAFT. 89 

Sir William Phipps, the new Governor, is in certain 
aspects a most romantic figure. The obscure son of 
a settler in the wilds of Maine, he was first an appren- 
tice to a ship-carpenter : coming to Boston early in 
manhood, he learned there to read and write, and 
soon married a widow of position and fortune de- 
cidedly above his own. Prospering for a while as a 
shipbuilder, he soon took to the sea ; and by the year 
1684 he had so distinguished himself that he was put 
in command of a frigate, in which he sailed to the 
West Indies in search of a wrecked Spanish treas- 
ure-ship. After various adventures and mutinies, he 
actually discovered the wreck. He brought back to 
England treasure to the amount of three hundred 
thousand pounds, in return for which feat he was 
knighted by James II. And in Sir Edmund Andros's 
time he came home to Boston with a comfortable for- 
tune of his own and the office of High Sheriff of New 
England. By no means in sympathy with the Gov- 
ernor, he soon went back to England for a while, 
where he had more or less to do with Increase Mather. 
In 1690 he was again in Boston, where, as we have 
seen before, he took command of the successful ex 
pedition against Port Royal. The first real rebuff in 
the career of this archetype of self-made Yankees was 
the failure of the expedition which, too late in the 
same year, he led against Quebec. Undiscouraged, 
he went back to England with plans for a fresh expe- 
dition against the French. This came to nothing ; 
but Increase Mather, who saw much of him in Lon- 
don, pitched on him, and obtained the approval of 
King William for him, as the man of men to be 



90 COTTON MATHER. 



^ 



the first Governor of the royal Province of Massa- 
chusetts. 

It would have been hard to find a governor who 
should promise more for the polity to which the Math- 
ers gave every energy of their lives. A man of the 
people, conspicuous above any one else of his time for 
just that kind of material success which most touches 
the popular imagination, Sir William, though hot- 
headed and full of the pompous tyranny of the quarter- 
deck, seems to have had one of those big, hearty, 
human natures which command liking even where one 
cannot approve. He might be expected at once to 
command the sympathy of the people, who would see 
in him an example of what any one of them might be- 
come, and to be very firm in his determination to have 
his own way. If such a man be on the right course, 
he will carry things farther than any other kind. And, 
like most self-made Yankees, Sir William was on ex- 
actly the right course, from the point of view of the 
clergy. As a class, self-made men to this day grow up 
with a rather blind faith in the superiority to other 
men of ministers of the Gospel : in worldly moments 
they may smile at their spiritual advisers as impracti- 
cal ; but they go to church, and when it comes to 
spending their money they are very apt to spend it as 
the minister tells them to. And more than most self- 
made men Sir William looked up to the clergy, and 
most of all the clergy to the Mathers. It was Increase 
Mather's sermon on "The day of trouble is near," in 
1674,^ that first made him sensible of his sins; it was 
by Cotton Mather, just before the expedition to Port 

i Cf. page 26.^ 



WITCHCRAFT. 91 

Royal, in 1690, that he was baptized and received into 
the communion of the faithful ; it was to Increase 
Mather that he owed the office which crowned his 
worldly ambition. Clearly such a man as this might 
be trusted, if anybody might, to do the will of God as 
the Mathers expounded it. And the Mathers meant to 
expound it in the good old orthodox way; and the 
new Charter gave the Governor more power than he 
had ever had under the old ; so there was never a 
moment when the hopes of Christ's kingdom looked 
brighter. 

To understand what followed, we may well recall 
some things at which we have glanced already. In the 
view of the Puritans, the continent of America, whither 
they came to live in accordance with no laws but those 
of Scripture, had been until their coming the special 
territory of the Devil. Here he had ruled for centu- 
ries, unmolested by the opposing power of the Gospel : 
whoever doubted this had only to look at the degrada- 
tion of his miserable subjects, the native Indians, to be 
pretty well convinced. The landing of the Puritans 
was a direct invasion of his territories. He fought it 
in all manner of ways, — material and spiritual. The 
physical hardship of the earlier years of the settlement 
was largely his work ; so were the disturbances raised 
within the Colonies by heretics and malcontents ; so, 
more palpably still, were the Indian wars in which his 
subjects rose in arms against the servants of Christ ; 
so, too, were certain phenomena that every one at the 
present day would instantly recognize as natural : more 
than once Cotton Mather remarks as clearly diaboli- 
cal the fact that the steeples of churches are oftener 



/ 



92 COTTON MATHER. 

Struck by lightning than any other structures. And from 
the very earliest days of the settlement the Devil had 
waged his unholy war in a more subtle way still : ap- 
pearing in person, or in the person of direct emissaries 
from the invisible world, to more than a few hapless 
Christians, he had constantly striven with bribes and 
threats to seduce them to his service. Whoever yielded 
to him was rewarded by the possession of supernatural 
power, which was secretly exerted for all manner of 
malicious purposes ; these were the witches : whoever 
withstood him was tortured in mind and body almost 
beyond the power of men to bear; these were the 
bewitched. There was no phase of the Devil's warfare 
so insidious, so impalpable, so dangerous, as this : in 
the very heart of the churches, in the pulpits them- 
selves, witches might lurk. Their crime was the dark- 
est of all, — deliberate treason to the Lord ; but it was 
the hardest of all to detect and to prove, — the most 
horrible, both in its nature and in its possibility of evil- 
doing. Mysterious, horrible, inevitable, it demanded 
every effort of Christians to withstand its subtle power. 
To the Mathers, I believe, all this was very real. In 
1684 Increase Mather had written a book against 
witchcraft. Two years later, as we have seen, Cotton 
Mather had had what he might well have believed a 
special message from Heaven that his chief mission for 
the moment was to fight the witches. The sins of the 
Colonists had brought on them the most terrible of 
their misfortunes : the Charter was gone, and Kirk was 
coming with his red-coats ; and, in the deep agony of 
secret prayer, Cotton Mather was beseeching God to 
show mercy to New England, and promising, when such 



WITCHCRAFT. 93 

mercy came, what special services the Lord might see 
fit to demand. The good news came, at a moment 
when the Lord was rewarding his prayers by visions 
of a white-robed angel from whose hps he heard as- 
surances of Divine favour. King Charles was dead, 
Kirk was coming no longer. His prayers had availed 
to save New England from the worst of her dangers. 
What should he do for the Lord? At that very mo- 
ment, as we have seen, witchcraft was abroad. It was 
his duty to collect testimony against it, to denounce it, 
to fight it with all his might. From that moment, ap- 
parently, he began. And the more he studied it, the 
more real and terrible he found it. In 1688 there was 
a sad outbreak of it in Boston : Cotton ]\lather took 
into his own house one of the afflicted children, whose 
behaviour as he relates it was in all respects such as to 
increase his belief both in the reality of the Devil's 
work, and in the divine sanction of his own efforts 
against it. And now, in 1692, when the prayers of 
New England for a righteous charter had been granted, 
when the best of governors was come, ready to put 
into execution the best of policies, when at last the ma- 
terial prospects of Christ's kingdom were fairer than for 
years before, the Devil began such a spiritual assault on 
New England as had never before been approached. 

The story of Salem Witchcraft has been told by 
LTpham with a fulness and a fairness that leave nothing 
to be added. But he fails, I think, sympathetically to 
understand a fact which he emphasizes with character- 
istic honesty, — the tremendous influence on human 
beings of that profound realizing sense of the mysteries 
that surround us, to which those who do not share it 
give the name superstition. 



94 COTTON MATHER. 

At various periods of history epidemics of supersti- 
tion have appeared, sometimes in madly tragic forms, 
sometimes, as in modern spirituaHsm, in grotesquely 
comic ones. These are generally classed as pure delu- 
sions, based on no external facts. But for my part, 
though I may claim none of the authority which would 
come from special 'study of the subject, I am strongly 
inclined to believe that from the earUest recorded times 
a certain pretty definite group of mysterious phe- 
nomena has, under various names, really shown itself 
throughout human society. Oracles, magic, witchcraft, 
animal magnetism, spiritualism, — call the phenomena 
what you will, — seem to me a fact. Certain phases of 
it are beginning to be understood under the name of 
hypnotism. Other phases, after the best study that 
has been given them, seem to be little else than de- 
liberate fraud and falsehood ; but they are fraud and 
falsehood, if this be all they are, of a specific kind, un- 
changed for centuries. The evidence at the trial of 
the Marechal de Rais, a soldier of Joan of Arc and the 
original of the tale of Blue-Beard, relates phenomena 
that anybody can see to-day by paying a dollar to a 
" materializing medium." And some of them are very 
like what are related in the trials of the Salem witches. 
So specific is the fraud, if only fraud it be, that it may 
well be regarded, I think, as a distinct mental, or per- 
haps rather moral disorder. 

With no sort of pretension to scientific knowledge, I 
have found that a guess I made in talk some years ago 
throws what may be a little light on many of the myste- 
rious phenomena that in Cotton Mather's time were 
deemed indisputably diabolical. I shall venture, then, 



WITCHCRAFT. 95 

to State it here, to be taken for no more than a lay- 
man's guess may be worth. If, as modern science 
tends to show, human beings are the result of a pro- 
cess of evolution from lower forms of Ufe, there must 
have been in our ancestral history a period when the 
intelligence of our progenitors was as different from the 
modern human mind — the only form of intelligence 
familiar to our experience or preserved in the records 
of our race — as were their remote aquatic bodies from 
the human form we know to-day. To-day we can per- 
ceive with any approach to distinctness only what re- 
veals itself to us through the medium of our five senses ; 
but we have only to look at the intricate wheelings of 
a flock of birds, at the flight of a carrier pigeon, at the 
course of a dog who runs straight home over a hundred 
miles of strange country, to see more than a probability 
that animals not remote from us physically have per- 
ceptions to which we are strangers. It seems wholly 
conceivable, then, that in the remote psychologic past 
of our race there may have been in our ancestors cer- 
tain powers of perception which countless centuries of 
disuse have made so rudimentary that in our normal 
condition we are not conscious of them. But if such 
there were, it would not be strange that, in abnormal 
states, the rudimentary vestiges of these disused powers 
of perception might sometimes be revived. If this 
were the case, we might naturally expect two phenom- 
ena to accompany such a revival : in the first place, as 
such powers of perception, from my very hypothesis, 
belong normally to a period in the development of our 
race when human society and what we call moral law 
have not yet appeared, we should expect them to be 



96 COTTON MATHER. 

intimately connected with a state of emotion that 
ignores what we call the moral sense, and so to be 
accompanied by various forms of misconduct ; in the 
second place, as our chief modem means of communi- 
cation — articulate language — belongs to a period 
when human intelligence has assumed its present form, 
we should expect to find it inadequate for the expres- 
sion of facts which it never professed to cover, and 
so we should expect such phenomena as we are con- 
sidering to be accompanied by an erratic, impotent 
inaccuracy of statement, which would soon shade into 
something indistinguishable from deliberate falsehood. 
In other words, such phenomena would naturally in- 
volve in whoever abandons himself to them a mental 
and moral degeneracy which any one who believes in a 
personal devil would not hesitate to ascribe to the direct 
intervention of Satan. 

Now what disposes me, scientifically a layman I 
must repeat, to think that my guess may have some- 
thing in it is that mental and moral degeneracy — 
credulity and fraud — seem almost invariably so to 
entangle themselves with occult phenomena that many 
cool-headed people are disposed to assert the whole 
thing a lie. To me, as I have shown, it does not seem 
so simple. I am much disposed to think that necro- 
mancers, witches, mediums, — what not, — actually do 
perceive in the infinite realities about us things that 
are imperceptible to normal human beings ; but that 
they perceive them only at a sacrifice of their higher 
faculties — mental and moral — not inaptly symbolized 
in the old tales of those who sell their souls. 

If this be true, witchcraft is not a delusion : it is a 



I 



WITCHCRAFT. 



97 



thing more subtly dangerous still. Such an epidemic 
of it as came to New England in 1692 is as diaboHcal 
a fact as human beings can know : unchecked, it can 
really work mischief unspeakable. I have said enough, 
I think, to show why I heartily sympathize with those 
who in 1692 did their utmost to suppress it; to show, 
too, why the fatally tragic phase of the witch trials 
seems to me, not the fact that there was no crime to 
condemn, but the fact that the evidence on which 
certain wretched people were executed proves, on 
scrutiny, utterly insufficient. It was Httle better than 
to-day would be the ravings of a clairvoyant against 
one accused of theft. And yet, if there be anything in 
my guess, this too is just what we might expect. Not 
knowing what they did, the judges would strain every 
nerve — just as in their rapt ecstasies the Mathers 
strained every nerve, along with their Puritan fellows, 
and the saints of every faith — to awaken from the 
lethargy of countless ages those rudimentary powers 
which can be awakened only at the expense of what 
we think the higher ones that have supplanted them. 
The motive may make a difference : he who strives to 
serve God may end as he begun, a better man than 
he who consents to serve the Devil. But, for all that, 
bewitched and judges alike, the startled ministers to 
whom the judges turned for counsel, and perhaps not 
a few of the witches too, who may well have believed 
in themselves, vie with one another in a devil's race, 
harking back to mental and moral depths from which 
humanity has taken countless centuries to rise. 

Whoever cares to know in detail the story of 1692 
may read it in Upham, or in Palfrey. In brief, the 

7 



98 COTTON MATHER. 

children of Mr. Parris, minister of Salem Village, were 
seized early in the year with disorders which seemed 
of no earthly origin. They accused certain neighbours 
of bewitching them ; the neighbours were arrested. The 
troubles and the accusations spread with the speed 
of any panic. By the time Sir William assumed the 
government, the whole region was in an agony of super- 
stitious terror ; and whoever raised his voice against 
the matter fell under suspicion of league with the Devil. 
At that moment, as the old judicial system had fallen 
with the Charter, there were no regular courts. Within 
a few weeks, Sir William, full of the gravity of the 
situation, and probably under the direct advice of the 
Mathers, appointed a special Court of Oyer and Ter- 
miner to try the witches. William Stoughton, the 
Deputy Governor, was made Chief Justice : his six 
associates were gentlemen of the highest station and 
character in the Province : among them was Sam- 
uel Sewall, whose Diary I have so often quoted. On 
the 2d of June this court condemned one Bridget 
Bishop : on the loth she was executed for witchcraft. 
Before proceeding further, the court consulted the 
ministers of Boston and the neighbourhood. The answer 
of the ministers is said to have been drawn up by 
Cotton Mather: in general terms it urged "the im- 
portance of caution and circumspection in the methods 
of examination," but " earnestly recommended that the 
proceedings should be vigorously carried on." ^ 

It is largely on this document that the charge against 
Cotton Mather rests : he is believed by many deliber- 
ately to have urged the judicial murder of innocent 

1 Upham, II. 268. 



WITCHCRAFT. 99 

people for the simple purpose of establishing and main- 
taining his own ascendency in the state. To me, and 
what I have written already should show why, the 
paper seems the only possible thing for an honest, 
superstitious man — himself in direct communication 
with the blessed part of the invisible world — to have 
written. Witchcraft was to him the most terrible of 
realities ; not to proceed against it would have been to 
betray the cause of Christ ; but the Devil stood ready 
to beguile the courts themselves ; the evidence must 
be carefully scrutinized, or who could tell what mischief 
might come ? 

Thus encouraged, the Court proceeded. How many 
wretched people were committed can never be quite 
known : Upham thinks several hundreds.^ Nineteen 
were hanged ; one was pressed to death for refusing to 
plead to his indictment ; at least two died in jail. By 
the end of September, a revulsion of popular feeling 
had come. The accusations had spread too far : the 
evidence on which the witches were executed was be- 
ginning to seem too flimsy. On the 2 2d of Septem- 
ber came the last executions. In January, 1693,^ the 
special Court of Oyer and Terminer was supplanted 
by a regular Superior Court, consisting of much the 
same men. It threw out "spectral evidence," — that 
is, it declined to consider the ravings of the bewitched : 
only three out of fifty indicted for witchcraft were con- 
demned, and none of these was executed. In May, 
1693, the panic was over. By proclamation. Sir William 
Phipps discharged all the accused. " Such a jail 
delivery," says Hutchinson, " has never been known 
in New England." ^ 

J Upham, II. 35r. - Ibid., II. 349. 



lOO COTTON MATHER. 

In all this matter Increase Mather seems to have 
played no conspicuous part. Four years of diplomacy 
in the capital of the British empire had perhaps taught 
him practical lessons of prudence not to be learned in 
any less arduous school. But while these were learning, 
his son, not yet thirty years old. had been surrounded 
by influences diametrically different. In the provincial 
Boston, which was at once the greatest city in America 
and the only home he ever knew, Cotton Mather had 
found himself, at an age when most men are still passed 
by as young, among the chiefs of the leaders. And then, 
as later, it had been his lot to meet hardly anybody 
whom he could honestly deem by his own standards 
superior to himself. As we shall see by and by, his 
later career was marked by what has often seemed, 
particularly when we remember his constant failure to 
achieve the public ends he strove for, a ridiculous and 
overweening vanity. But I think that few can rise 
from a careful study of his diary without feeling that 
this vanity was no blind self-approval ; but at most a 
conviction, in his happier moments, that, far as he was 
from the attainment of his ideals, there were none about 
him who were any nearer the attainment of theirs, and 
that there were many — and year by year more — who 
were falling away from the ancestral traditions that he 
never gave up. In 1692 he was still in the flush of 
youth and of success. No one was more active in 
fighting the Devil's works as revealed in witchcraft. 
No one, for well on to two centuries, has borne so 
much of the odium of what was done as he. 

We have seen how his books and his conduct in 
1688 tended to stir up public feeling against the 






WITCHCRAFT. 101 

witches ; we have seen how the letter of the ministers 
which he drew up encouraged the puzzled Court of 
Oyer and Terminer to proceed with its deadly work. 
On the 19th of August, 1692, the most eminent of 
the victims of the proceedings was hanged ; this was 
the Rev. George Burroughs, a graduate of Harvard Col- 
lege, and for something Uke twenty years a minister of 
the Gospel. Four others died with him. One of Sew- 
all's very few notes of this period describes this day. 

" A very great number of Spectators . . , present. Mr 
Cotton Mather was there. ... All of them said they were 
ihocent. . . . Mr. Mather says they all died by a Righteous 
sentence. Mr. Burroughs, by his Speech, Prayer, protes- 
tation of his Innocence, did much move unthinking per- 
sons, which occasions their speaking liardly concerning his 
being executed." In the margin Sewall has written " Dole- 
full Witchcraft ! " 1 

Calef, of whom we shall hear more by and by, gives 
a fuller account of the scene : — 

" When [Mr. Burroughs] was upon the ladder, he made a 
speech for the clearing of his innocency, with such solemn 
and serious expressions, as were to the admiration of all 
present : his prayer (which he concluded by repeadng the 
Lord's prayer'-^) was so well worded, and uttered with such 
composedness, and such (at least seeming 1 fervency of 
spirit, as was very affecting, and drew tears from many, so 
that it seemed to some that the spectators would hinder 
the execution. The accusers^ said the black man stood 
and dictated to him. As soon as he was turned off, Mr. 

1 Diary, I. 363. 

^ It was believed that no witch could repeat the Lord's prayer 
without error. 

^ The bewitched : a capital example of spectral evidence. 



T02 COTTON MATHER. 

Cotton Mather, being mounted upon a horse, addressed 
himself to the people, partly to declare that . . . [Bur- 
roughs] was no ordained minister, and partly to possess 
the people of his guilt, saying that the devil has often been 
transformed into an angel of light ; and this somewhat ap- 
peased the people, and the executions went on. When he 
was cut down, he was dragged by the halter to a hole . . . 
between the rocks, about two feet deep, his shirt and 
breeches being pulled off, and an old pair of trowsers of 
one executed put on his lower parts ; he was so put in 
. . . that one of his hands and his chin . . . were left 
uncovered." ^ 

Just a month later, Giles Corey was pressed to death 
for refusing to plead to his indictment, — the solitary 
instance in America of this terrible barbarity of the old 
English criminal law. 

'' Sept. 20," writes Sewall, " Now I hear from Salem that 
about 1 8 years agoe he was suspected to have stamped and 
press'd a man to death, but was cleared. Twas not re- 
membered till AiTe Putnam was told of it by said Corey's 
Spectre the Sabbath-day night before the Execution."'-^ 

On this very day, the 20th of September, two days 
before the last of the executions. Cotton Mather wrote 
to Stephen Sewall, clerk of the court at Salem, a let- 
ter which Upham deems conclusive of his artful dis- 
honesty.^ 

" That I may bee the more capable to assist, in lifting up 
a standard against the Infernal Enemy," it runs, " I must 

1 Page 213. 

- Diary, I. 364. Upham, II. 341, seq., shows the charge 
against Corey to have been groundless. There is no more nota- 
ble example of the popular infatuation. 

3 Upham, II. 487, seq. Cf. Sibley, III. 11. 



WITCHCRAFT. 1 03 

Renew my most Importunate Request, that you would 
please quickly to perform, what you kindly promised, of 
giving me a Narrative of the Evidences given in at the 
Trials of half a dozen, or if you please a dozen, of the prin- 
cipal Witches, that have been condemned. ... I am will- 
ing that when you write, you should imagine me as obstinate 
a Sadducee and Witch-advocate as any among us : ad- 
dress mee as one that Believ'd Nothing Reasonable; and 
when you have so knocked mee down, in a spectre so 
unlike mee, you will enable mee, to box it about, among my 
Neighbs, till it come, I know not where, at last" 

Two days later, on that very 2 2d of September 
when the last witches were hanging, Sewall notes that 
" William Stoughton, Esqr., John Hathorne, Esqr., Mr. 
Cotton Mather, and Capt. John Higginson, with my 
brother St., were at our house, speaking about publish- 
ing some Trials of Witches." ^ The result of this letter 
and conference seems to have been Cotton Mather's 
well known ''Wonders of the Invisible World," pub- 
lished the next year both in Boston and in London. 

A few of Sewall's notes show the course of popular 
feeling meanwhile. On the 15th of October he went 
to Cambridge to discourse with Mr. Danforth about 
witchcraft : Mr. Danforth 

" thinks there cahot be a procedure in the Court except 
there be some better consent of Ministers and People." 
On the 26th, " A Bill is sent in about calling a Fast, and 
Convocation of Ministers, that may be led in the right way 
as to the Witchcrafts. The reason and maiier of doing it, 

1 Diary, I. 365. Stoughton, Hathorne, and Sewall were 
judges of the Court of Oyer and Terminer ; Stephen Sewall, 
clerk of the Court, was the man to whom Cotton Mather had 
written on September 20. 



104 COTTOX MATHER. 

is such, that the Court of Oyer and Terminer count them- 
selves thereby dismissed. 29 Xos and 33 yeas to the Bill." 
On the 28th, Sewall, •• as had done several times before, 
desired to have the advice of the Governour and Council 
as to the sitting of the Court of Oyer and Terminer next 
week : said should move it no more ; great silence, as if 
should say, do not go." Next day, •■ Mr. Russell asked 
whether the Court of Oyer and Terminer should sit, ex- 
pressing some fear of Inconvenience by its fall. Governour 
said it must fall. Lieut. -Governour ^ not in Town." 



It was nearly a year later, in September, 1693, that 
Cotton Mather, in Upham's phrase,^ " succeeded in 
getting up " the case of witchcraft that cost him dear- 
est. One Margaret Rule, a young woman of Boston 
whose character seems to have been none of the best, 
was seized with all the s)TQptoms of possession. One 
symptom, mentioned I think only in her case, throws 
considerable light on her disorder : the devils pre- 
vented her from eating, but permitted her occasionally 
to swallow a little rum. Both of the blathers visited 
her, surrounded by her startled and credulous friends ; 
they listened with full faith to her tales of black spirits 
and white who haunted her ; they examined her per- 
son with what in less holy men might have savoured 
of indiscretion ; they prayed with her and for her. 
And finally, the discouraged de\'ils fled away ; and she, 
returning perfectly to herself, though extremely weak 
and faint and overwhelmed with vapours, most affec- 
tionately gave thanks to God for her deliverance.^ 
This case, portending such a diabolical descent on Bos- 
ton as had passed over Salem, attracted the attention 

^ Stoughton. - Upham, II. 4S9. - Calef, p 34. 



WITCHCRAFT. 105 

among others, of one Robert Calef, a merchant of the 
town. He visited Margaret Rule when the Mathers 
were with her. A perfect matter-of-fact man, thor- 
oughly honest and equally devoid of imagination, he saw 
in her sufferings only a vulgar cheat, and in the conduct 
of the Mathers something which seems to have im- 
pressed him as deliberate and not wholly decent con- 
nivance in her imposture. He made notes of what he 
had seen, and submitted them to Cotton Mather. The 
controversy that followed, which has been admirably 
summarized by Sibley,^ lasted in one form or another 
for six years. In 1700, Calef s book on the subject 
was published in London, and soon found its way to 
Boston.^ 

Calefs temper was that of the rational Eighteenth 
Century : the Mathers belonged rather to the Sixteenth, 
— the age of passionate religious enthusiasm. To me, 
both sides seem equally honest ; and the difference be- 
tween them seems chiefly due to the fact that, as in a 
thousand other cases in human history, a man of the 
future can rarely so rise above himself as to understand 
men of the past. In such a controversy, it is the 
man of the future that the future holds right. In the 
time that has passed since the Mathers and Calef have 
lain in their graves, the world has seen an age of reason, 
and not of imaginative emotion. And most of those 
who have concerned themselves about these dead men 
have deemed Calef all in the right, and the Mathers 
foolish, if not worse. But did Calef see all ? Is there, 
after all, in a great epidemic of superstition nothing 

1 Harvard Graduates, III. 12-18. 
'^ Cf. pages 150, 1S6. 



io6 COTTON MATHER. 

beyond what those who escape the contagion perceive? 
Are we not to-day beginning to guess that there may be 
in heaven and earth more things than are yet dreamt 
of in your philosophy? If there be, it may in the 
end prove the verdict of men that neither honest Calef 
nor the honest Mathers saw all that passed before 
their eyes ; but that each in his own way caught a 
glimpse of truth, and that each believed that all the 
truth was comprised in the bit he saw. 

But we are come now to a point where we must turn 
to Cotton Mather himself; where we must look to the 
diaries he has left us, and to the works he wrote later, 
for an account of what these critical years meant to 
him. The substance of his later writings seems to me 
adequately represented by the passages about witch- 
craft in the " Magnalia " and the " Parentator." A few 
words of these, and we will pass to his diaries for 1692 ^ 
and 1693.^ 

The substance of his final view of the case, as shown 
in his published works, seems to have been this : 
The witchcraft was a real attack of the Devil, per- 
mitted perhaps as a punishment for dabblings in sor- 
cery and magical tricks which people had begun to 
allow themselves.^ The afflictions of the possessed, 
which he details in all their petty absurdities, that 
seem nowadays as monstrously trivial, were really 
diabolical. 

"Flashy people may burlesque these things, but when 
hundreds of the most sober people in a country where they 

1 In possession of the American Antiquarian Society. 
'^ In possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 
3 Parentator, XXVIII. 



WITCHCRAFT. 107 

have as much mother-'wit certainly as the rest of mankind, 
know them to be true^ nothing but the absurd and froward 
Spirit of Sadducism can question them." ^ 

The only doubtful question was whether the Devil 
had the power of assuming before the eyes of his vic- 
tims the shape of innocent persons. The assumption 
on the part of the judges that he had no such power 
led to the conviction on spectral evidence of not a few 
victims of the court. The abandonment of this as- 
sumption led to the cessation of the prosecutions, and 
to the jail delivery of 1693. Mather asserts in sub- 
stance that he always opposed spectral evidence ; and 
it is certain that Increase Mather's " Cases of Con- 
science," published in 1694, clearly condemns it. It 
is certain, too, that Cotton Mather's letter to John 
Richards, dated May 31, 1692,^ warns the judge in the 
most specific terms against the dangers of spectral evi- 
dence. Cotton Mather's own position, as he finally 
states it, then, seems to have been a persistent belief 
in witchcraft, a persistent determination to keep the 
public alive to all the horrors of the crime, and to op- 
pose it by every means in his power^ but a growing 
doubt as to how far so mysterious and terrible an evil 
can be dealt with by so material an engine as the crim- 
inal law. On the whole he inclines more and more to 
reliance on fasting and prayer. This was undoubtedly 
the view taken, when the panic was once over, by even 
the most strenuous advocates of the reality of witchcraft, 
and Cotton Mather undeniably takes to himself the 
credit of having held and urged it all along. 

1 Magnalia, II. App. § 16. 

2 Mather Papers, 392, seq. See page no. 



1 08 CO TTON MA THER. 

The part of the '' MagnaUa " in which these facts ap- 
pear is the Life of Sir WilUam Phipps, first pubUshed 
separately and anonymously in 1697. On the fact 
that this book was anonymous, Calef bases much of 
his charge that Mather wrote it dishonestly to praise 
himself, and to delude people into believing him free 
from the responsibility of having urged on the prosecu- 
tions. On this fact, on the feebleness of the caution 
addressed by the ministers to the Court of Oyer and 
Terminer, and on the letter to Stephen Sewall, rests 
most of the charge of dishonesty from which Mather's 
name has never been cleared to the satisfaction of his 
opponents. It seems to me that the anonymous pub- 
lication — by no means the only example of it in 
Mather's voluminous works ^ — may well have been 
due to no worse motive than a wish for a fair hearing, 
which might not have been accorded to a name which 
was held up to public execration. It seems to me, too, 
that the letter of the ministers may be taken for just 
what it purports to be, — an honest warning of a 
danger, in spite of which the Court has no moral right 
to hesitate in the performance of its official duty. And 
in the letter to Stephen Sewall I can see nothing incon- 
sistent with the conclusion that what Cotton Mather 
wished to maintain unshaken was not the fatal penalty 
of the law, but that belief in the reality of witchcraft 
which he certainly never abandoned. Calef and pos- 
terity seem to me to have confused two distinct things, 
— this belief in the reality of witchcraft, and insistence 
on the validity of spectral evidence. But, when all 

1 What is more, he acknowledged the book in 1702, when the 
" Magnalia" was published. 



WITCHCRAFT. 1 09 

is said, I think two facts against Mather remain : his 
conduct and his words had as much as any one man's 
could have to do with the raising of the panic ; and in 
his final presentation of the matter, both in his diaries 
and in his published works, he never grants or meets 
the full strength of the case against him. 

But before we agree with those who beUeve him to 
have been deliberately dishonest, it will be only fair to 
read what his diaries tell us of these troubled years ; 
and to read it, too, with certain facts in mind that seem 
to me too little considered. In the first place, as we 
have seen, Cotton Mather had for years been a reli- 
gious enthusiast whose constant ecstasies brought him 
into such direct communication with Heaven as he be- 
lieved the witches to maintain with Hell; in other 
words, he had for years been, what he remained all his 
life, a constant victim of a mental or moral disorder 
whose normal tendency is towards the growth of un- 
witting credulity and fraud. In the second place, I 
grow to believe more and more that the ceaseless activ- 
ity of mind and body, of thought, of emotion, of action, 
into which he never ceased to lash himself, — the ac- 
tivity which produced in actual words and deeds a life- 
work whose bulk to-day seems almost incredible, — 
never permitted him, in any act or word, to be really . 
deliberate at all. Striving with all his might to do the 
Lord's work, believing that the Lord's will forbade him 
for a moment to relax a particle of his energy, he went 
through this world from beginning to end in a state of 
emotional exaltation, of passionate afflation and reac- 
tion, which left him in all the sixty years of his con- 
scious life hardly an hour of that cool thoughtfulness 



no CO TTON MA THER. 

without which any dehberation is impossible. It has 
been his fate — a man whose whole career was a storm 
of passion — to be judged, in the seclusion of libraries, 
by unimaginative, unimpassioned posterity. So cool 
sympathizers with old Calvinism who have sought to 
defend him, and cooler Protestants who have constantly 
condemned him, have alike failed to understand. 

They have failed, too, adequately to emphasize what 
seems to me the most notable piece of contemporary 
evidence. On May 31st, 1692, we have seen, — three 
days before Bridget Bishop, the first victim of the Court, 
was sentenced, — Cotton Mather wrote to John Rich- 
ards, one of the judges, a letter in which he takes, with 
the utmost decision, exactly the ground he occupied to 
the end of his life. 

"Do not lay more stress upon pure Spectre evidence 
than it will bear," he writes. . . . '' It is very certain that 
the divells have sometimes represented the shapes of per- 
sons not only innocent, but also very vertuous." 

There should be confession, or unmistakable signs : 
he believes in witch-marks, to be sure, and in the 
water-ordeal. But at the very end he adds this 
caution : — 

"It is worth considering whether there be a necessity 
ahvayes by Extirpacons by Halter or fagott [to punish] 
every wretched creature that shall be hooked into some 
degrees of Witchcraft. What if some of the lesser Crimi- 
nalls, be only scourged with lesser punishments, and also 
put upon some solemn, . . . Publike . . . renunciation of 
the Divel? I am apt to thinke that the Divels would then 
cease afflicting the Neighbourhood." 



WITCHCRAFT. 1 1 1 

So we come back to the diary for 1692.^ As I have 
said already, this is far more abridged and less spe- 
cific than most of his diaries. But I do not believe it 
untrue. The last entry I quoted was made in May, 
when his father had just returned, and the new Charter 
was just passing into operation. "And now," he 
wrote, " I will call upon the Lord as long as I live." 

The rest of his entries for the year bear no date. 
He notes briefly that he has preached against temporal 
persecution of heresy ; " And I hope the Lord will own 
me with a more Singular Success in the suppression of 
Haeresy by Endeavours more Spiritual and Evangeli- 
cal." He notes that in his public ministry he has been 
largely handling the Day of Judgment, from texts in 
the 25 th chapter of Matthew. Then comes a long 
note beginning, " The Rest of the Summer was a very 
doleful Time unto the whole Countrey." He tells how 
devils possessed many people, how witches were ac- 
cused in the visions of the afflicted, how he himself 
testified both publicly and privately against the dan- 
gers of spectral evidence, and how it was he who drew 
up the letter from the ministers to the Court of Oyer 
and Terminer. 

"Nevertheless," he goes on,^ ''I saw in most of the 
Judges a most charming Instance of prudence and patience, 
and I knew their exemplary pietie, and the Anguish of 
Soul with which they sought the Direction of Heaven : 
above most other people, whom I generally saw enchanted 

1 In possession of the American Antiquarian Society. 

^ This passage, and indeed the diaries concerning this matter 
in general, have been studied and cited by Peabody: Sparks's 
American Biographies, Vol. VI. 



112 COTTOX MATHER. 

into a Raging, Railing, Scandalous and unreasonable dis- 
position as the distress increased upon us. For this cause, 
though I would not allow the Principles, that some of the 
Judges had espoused, yet I could not but speak honourably 
of their Persons, on all occasions: and my Compassion 
upon the Sight of their Difficulties Raised by my Journeys 
to Salem, the Chief Seat of these Diabolical Vexations, 
caused me yett more to do so. And merely, as far as I 
can Learn, for this Reason, the mad people thro' the Coun- 
trey under a fascination on their Spirits equal to what the 
Energumens had on their Bodies, Reviled 7nee^ as if I had 
been the Doer of all the Hard Things that were done in the 
prosecution of the Witchcraft.*' 

He goes on to note how he offered to provide in his 
own family for six of the possessed, that he might try 
whether prayer and fasting " would not putt an End to 
their Hea\7 Trials " ; how throughout the summer he 
prayed and fasted weekly for this heavy affliction to the 
country ; how he visited witches in prison and preached 
to them ; and how he wrote his " Wonders of the In- 
visible World." And at the end of this passage is a note 
in brackets, apparently made at some later time : — 

" [Upon the severest Examination, and the Solemnest 
Supplication, I still think, that for the main, I have Written 
Right.'] " 

Later come less coherent notes. One remarks that 
the spectres brought books in which they urged the 
possessed to sign away their souls. Now, as Cotton 
Mather worked for God largely by writing books, this 
looked as if " this Assault of the Evil Angels upon the 
Countrey was intended by Hell as a particular Defiance 
unto my poor Endeavours to bring the Souls of men 
unto Heaven." Whereupon, he wrote "Awakenings 



WITCHCRAFT. II3 

for the Unregenerate," which he resolved, if he Uved, 
to give away at the rate of two a week for two years. 
In the margin he notes that the evil angels, through a 
possessed young woman, reproached him for never hav- 
ing preached on B-Cv. 13. %} '-I to oppose them," 
he goes on, " and yett not follow them, chose to preach 
on Rev. 20. 15."^ Later he makes a memorandum : as 
the devils bid Energumens sign books, he will sign the 
best of books. On the fly-leaves of his favourite Bibles 
he wrote professions and confessions of his faith : for 
example, " Received as the Book of God and of Life 
by Cotton Mather." 

"The Hearty Wishes of Cotton Mather." come next. 
" I have ever now and then gone to the good God with the 
most Solemn Addresses That I may be altogether delivered 
from Enchantments : that no Enchantment on my 7nind 
may hinder mee from seeing or doing any thing for the 
glory of God^ or dispose mee to anythifig whereat God may 
be displeased. The Reason of this Wish is Because I be- 
leeve, that a Real and proper Enchant7nent of the Divels 
do's blind and move the minds of the most of men : even 
in Instances of every sort. But I remember, That much 
Fasting as well as prayer is necessary to obtain a Rescue 
from Enchantments." 

The last entry I have noted for the year, when I 
remember all the circumstances of the man's life, has 
for me real pathos : he would carefully avoid personal 
quarrels, 

1 " And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him [the 
beast], whose names are not written in the book of life of the 
Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." 

* " And whosoever was not found written in the book of life 
was cast into the lake of fire." 

S 



114 CO TTON MA THER. 

" Because no man can manage a personal Quarrel against 
another without Losing abundance of precious Time. . . . 
And one Likely to Live, so little a Time, as I, had need 
throw away, as Little of his Time, as ever he can." 

The diary for 1693^ is a little more full than that 
for 1692 ; but, like that, is an abridgement of the origi- 
nal, and omits most of the dates. On his birthday, he 
preached from the text, " O my God, take me not away 
in the midst of my days." Then he set to preach- 
ing over the whole Epistle of Jude,^ "intermingled 
wdth occasional texts." A little later he notes that a 
young woman possessed of devils has been delivered 
after he has held three fasts for her. He holds a 
thanksgiving accordingly ; but, her possession being 
renewed, falls again to fasting and prayer : — 

" And unto my amazement, when I had kept my Third 
Day for her, shee was finally and forever deHvered from the 
hands of the Evil Angels : and I had afterwards the satis- 
faction of seeing, not only Her so brought home unto the 
Lord that she was admitted into the Church, but also many 
others, even some scores, of young people Awakened by 
the picture of Hell exhibited in her Sufferings, to fiee from 
the wrath to come.'''' 

The next note I have copied tells more than any 
other I have found of Cotton Mather's pastoral 
methods : — 

" The church having hitherto extended a Church Watch 
unto none but Communicants, and confined Baptism unto 
Them and Their Children, I was desirous to bring the 

^ In possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 
2 A most minatory scripture. 



I 



WITCHCRAFT. II 5 

church into a posture more Agreeable unto the Advice of 
the Synod^m the year, 1662." So he preached on the sub- 
ject, and allowing no disputation, proceeded to circulate 
among the brethren of the church "an instrument contain- 
ing my Sentiments and purposes." The brethren " gener- 
ally signed a Desire and Address unto myself thereto 
annexed that I would act accordingly. As for the few 
. . . who were Disaffected unto my proceedings, I carried 
it so peaceably, and obligingly, and yett resolutely, towards 
them, that they patiently Lett me take my way: and some 
of them told mee, they thought I did well to do as I did : 
tho' they could not yett come to see as I did. . . . Thus was 
the church quiedy brought unto a point, which heretofore 
cost no Little Difficulty. But my Charge of such as now 
submitt themselves to my Ecclesiastical Watch was ex- 
ceedingly increased. — Lord, Lett thy Grace bee suf- 
ficient FOR ME." 

He notes that during the spring his days of fast 
and humiliation were so frequent that he lost record 
of them ; that he kept, too, one or two days of 
Thanksgiving in his study. On one of these days, he 
goes on, — 

"My Special Errand unto the Lord was this: That 
whereas His Good Angels, did by His Order, many good 
offices for His people, Hee would please to grant unto mee 
the Enjoyment of all those Angelical Kindnesses, which 
are to bee done by His Order, for His Chosen Servants 
... in a manner and measure more Tratiscendent, than 
what the great Corruptions of the generalty of Good Men, 
permitted them to be made partakers of. Now that I 
might bee Qnaliffd for this Favour, I . . . Entreated 
that I may not, and Engaged that I will not, on the Score 
of any Angelical Coinmutiications , forsake the Conduct of 
the Lord's Written Word.'' 



li6 COTTON MATHER. 

He goes on to state certain lines of conduct which he 
proposes to follow, with the hope of making his be- 
haviour as agreeable to that of angels as he can. And 
his closing purpose is this : — 

" To Conceal ^\\\-\ all prudent Secrecy whatever Extraor- 
dinary Things I may perceive done for mee, by the An- 
gels^ who love Secrecy in their Administrations. 03'~" I do 
now believe," he adds, " That some Great Things are to 
be done for mee by the Angels of God." 

On the 28th of March his first son was born. The 
child had a malformation beyond the reach of con- 
temporary surgery. On the ist of April it died un- 
baptizcd. It was buried beneath the epitaph, " Re- 
served for a glorious Resurrection." 

"I had ,<;reat reason," writes the bereaved father, ''to 
suspect a Witchcraft, in this praeternatural Accident; be- 
cause my Wife, a few weeks before her Deliverance, was 
affrighted with an horrible Spectre, in the porch, which 
fright caused her Bowels to Turn within her ; and the 
Spectres which both before and after, Tormented a young 
woman in the Nei<j;hbourhood, brai^'d of their giving my 
Wife that Fright, in hopes, they said, of doing mischief unto 
her Infant, at Least, if not unto the Mother : and besides 
all this the child was no sooner Born but a suspected 
Woman sent unto my Father a Letter full of Railing against 
myself, wherein shee told him Hee little hieiv what might 
quickly befall some of his posterity. However, I made 
litUe Lh^e of, and laid little Stress on, this Conjecture : 
desiring to submitt unto the will of my Heavenly Father 
without which, lYot a sparro7v falls unto the Ground^ 

He notes how during the summer he testified 
against the sin of uncleanness, on the occasion of the 
execution of two young women for child murder. 



WITCHCRAFT. 1 1 7 

" I accompanied the wretches to their execution," he 
writes, " but extremely fear all the Labours were lost 
upon them : however sanctify'd unto many others." 
He notes how his preaching at Reading started a re- 
vival there ; how he conceived the idea of writing the 
Church History which, under the name of " Magnalia 
Christi Americana," remains by far the most notable 
of his publications; how in July a fleet arrived, and 
he started down the harbour to preacli to it, but fell 
so ill that he had to go home ; and how he recovered 
in the afternoon to find that there was yellow-fever 
aboard the ships, and to be convinced that an Angel 
of the Lord had upset his stomach for the purpose of 
preserving him from infection. He notes how he has 
prayed and preached against vices which are bringing 
judgments on the community, " and such of these vices 
as called for the Correction of the Magistrates, I hope, 
I did effectually stir up some of the Justices to pros- 
ecute." Then, very ecstatically, he notes how in these 
dying times he feels himself quite ready for death : 
yellow-fever was abroad now. He notes a resolution 
to visit widows and the fatherless : he tells how he 
wrote a " True and Brief Representation of the Coun- 
try," which was transmitted " with all the Secrecy de- 
sirable, unto the Kinc's own hand : who Read it with 
much Satisfaction, and I hope, formed from thence, 
in His own Royal Mind, those Characters of the Coun- 
trey whereof we shall reap the good lOffects for many a 
day." He notes how lie wrote a book called " Winter 
Meditations," which when winter came on was pub- 
lished ; and how towards the end of the summer he 
began his great commentary on the IJible, — a coUec- 



Ii8 COTTON MATHER. 

tion of every scrap of learning he can discover which 
has any bearing on Scripture. He worked at this for 
twenty years : it still remains in manuscript, under the 
name of " Biblia Americana."^ 

Early in September, he went to preach at Salem, 
where he sought " Furniture " for his Church History, 
and endeavoured '' that the complete History of the 
Late Witchcrafts and Possessions might not be Lost." 
The notes from which he intended to preach were 
stolen " with such Circumstances, that I am . . . satis- 
fy'd, the Spectres, or Agents in the Invisible Worlds were 
the Robbers." But he preached from memory, " so the 
Divel gott nothing." He had an interview with a pious 
woman, lately visited by shining spirits. Along with 
some things '' to be kept secret," she prophesied a 
new "Storm of Witchcraft ... to chastise the Ini- 
quity that was used in the wilful Smothering ... of 
the Last." On his return home, he found Margaret 
Rule down. 

" To avoid gratifying of the Evil Angels^ ... I did . . . 
concern myself to nse., and gett as much prayer as I could 
for the afflicted Young Woman ; and at the same time, to 
forbid, either her from Accusing any of the Neighbours, or 
others from Enquiring anything of her.^ Nevertheless, a 
Wicked Man wrote a most Lying Libel to revile my Con- 
duct in these Matters, which drove me to the Blessed God 
with my supplications. ... I did at first, it may bee, too 
much Resent the Injuries of that Libel; but God brought 
good out of it: it occasioned the multiplication of my 
prayers before Him ; it very much promoted the works of 
Humiliation and Mortification in my Soul." 

^ In possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 
2 In Calef himself I find nothing to contradict this. 



WITCHCRAFT. 119 

He resisted the temptation to desert, in consequence 
of the hbel, the lecture at the Old Meeting-House. 
As for his missing notes, he adds, the spectres bragged 
to the possessed girl that they had stolen them, but con- 
fessed that they could not keep them. Sure enough, 

" On the fifth of October following Every Leaf of my Notes, 
. . . tho' they were in eighteen separate . . . sheets, . . . 
were found drop't here and there about the Streets of Lyn : 
but how they came to bee so Dropt I cannot Imagine, and I 
as much wonder at the Exactness of their preservation." 

On the 3d of October, his little daughter Mary^ was 
ill. He prayed for her 

" With such Rapturous Assurances of the Divine Love 
unto mee and iniiie^ as would richly have made Amends for 
the Death of mo7e Children^ if God had then called for 
them. I was Unaccountably Assured, not only that this 
child shall be Happy forever, but that I never should have 
any Child., except what should bee an everlasting Temple 
to the Spirit of God : Yea, That I and Mine should bee 
together i?i the Kitigdome of God, World without End.'"' 

On the 6th, the child died : next day she was bur- 
ied : her epitaph was " Gone but not Lost." On the 
8th, in spite of his bereavement, he administered the 
sacrament ; 

" And, I hope, that I now so exemplify'd such a Behaviour 
as not only to embolden my Approaches to the Supper of 
the Lord, but also to direct and instruct my Neighbourhood, 
with what frame to encounter their Afflictions.*' 

On the loth, a military training day, he prayed and 
fasted, particularly for a possessed girl, — doubtless Mar- 

1 Born in 1691. 



I20 COTTON MATHER. 

garet Rule. A white spirit appeared to her, with word 
that God had made Cotton Mather her father, and 
thereupon she was deUvered. 

He notes in detail how he drew up a plan for a 
Negro meeting, in which he carefully attended both to 
the spiritual welfare of the Africans and to their tem- 
poral duties in the station of slavery to which it had 
pleased God to call them ; and how he prayed and 
preached at the almshouse. He tells then how he 
was himself accused of witchcraft : the tormentors of 
a possessed young woman made 

" my Image to appear before her, and they made them- 
selves Masters of her tongue so far, that she began in her 
Fits to complain that I Threatened her, . . . tho' whenshee 
came out of them, shee owned that They could not so 
much as make my Dead Shape do her any Harm. . . . Her 
greatest outcries when shee was herself^ were for my poor 
prayers." 

Aware of the terrible danger to his influence, if these 
rumours should gain credence, 

" I was putt," he writes, " upon . . . Agonies, and Singu- 
lar .. . Efforts of Soul, in the Resignatioti of my Name 
unto the Lord ; content that if Hee had no further Service 
for my A7/;/2<?, it should bee torn to pieces. . . . But 1 cried 
unto the Lord as for the Deliverance of my A^ame from the 
Malice of Hell, so for the Deliverance of the Young Woman 
whom the powers of Hell had seized upon. And behold ! 
. . . the possessed person . . . was Delivered . . . onthe-i/^ry 
same day j and the \^\\o\e plotl of the Divel to Reproach a 
poor Servant of the Lord Jesus Christ was Defeated." 

In January, his only surviving child, Katharine, was 
very ill ; praying for her, he was assured that she should 



WITCHCRAFT. I 2 1 

recover, and presently she did. His last note for the 
year tells how he offered to give up a part of his salary 
to some members of his church who lived at a distance, 
and were for starting a new meeting nearer home : but 
nothing came of it. 

Meanwhile he had published nine works : two, — a 
volume of sermons, and some meditations on the last 
judgment, — in 1692 ; and seven, — a preface to Mos- 
ten's " Spirit of Man," two volumes of sermons, his 
warnings against uncleanness, his " Winter Medita- 
tions," a letter on Witchcraft, and his "Wonders of 
the Invisible World," which was printed both at home 
and abroad, — in 1693. 

I have cited with perhaps tedious detail his account 
of himself during these years that proved the most 
critical of his life, because I have not found it much 
noticed elsewhere, and without it he cannot, I think, 
be fairly judged. I have told enough, I hope, to enable 
whoever cares, to pass honest judgment on him. There 
remain two or three facts, without which our notion of 
the great tragedy of witchcraft would be incomplete. 

Sewall, it will be remembered, was one of the judges 
who accepted spectral evidence. In the years that 
followed, he suffered many afflictions. In his diary for 
January, 1696-7, is this note : — 

" Copy of the Bill I put up on the Fast day ; giving 
it to Mr. Willard as he pass'd by, and standing up at 
the reading of it, and bowing when finished ; in the 
Afternoon. 

'' Samuel Sewall, sensible of the reiterated strokes of God 
upon himself and family : and being sensible, that as to the 
Guilt contracted upon the opening of the late Comission 



122 COTTON MATHER. 

of Oyer and Terminer at Salem (to which the order for this 
Day relates) he is, upon many accounts, more concerned 
than any that he knows of. Desires to take the Blame and 
shame of it, Asking pardon of men, And especially desiring 
prayers that God, who has an Unlimited Authority, would 
pardon that sin and all other his sins : personal and Rela- 
tive : And according to his infinite Benignity, and Sover- 
eignty, Not Visit the sin of him, or of any other, upon 
himself or any of his, nor upon the Land: But that He 
would powerfully defend him against all Temptations to Sin, 
for the future; and vouchsafe him the efficacious, saving 
Conduct of his Word and Spirit." 

It is said that when Stoughton, the Chief Justice of 
the Court of Oyer and Terminer, heard what Bewail 
had done, he declared that he had no such confession 
to make, having acted according to the best light God 
had given him.^ 

In Cotton Mather's diaries for later years'^ are two 
entries that belong here. The first was made at this 
very time, January 15 th, 1696-7. 

" Being afflicted last Night," it runs, " with Discouraging 
Thoughts as if unavoidable marks of the Divine Displeas- 
ure must overtake my Family, for my not appearing with 
tngour enough to stop the proceedings of the Judges, when 
the Inextricable Storm from the Invisible ^f^'^r/^ assaulted 
the Countrey, I did this morning in prayer with my Fam- 
ily, putt my Family into the merciful Hands of the Lord. 
And with Tears I Received Assurance of the Lord that 
marks of His Indignation should not follow my Family, 
but that having the Righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ 
pleading for us, Goodness and Mercy should folJow us and 
Signal Salvation of the Lord." 

1 Sewall's Diary, I. 446, note. 

2 Both diaries are in possession of the American Antiquarian 
Society. 



WITCHCRAFT. 1 23 

The other entry comes years later. On the night 
between the 15th and i6th of April, 1713, he held a 
vigil : in it he prayed that many books which he had 
published might do the good in the hope of which he 
had written them ; and finally, in the troubled per- 
plexity of spirit that had been growing during these 
long years, when his public influence and the public 
power of the church had been constantly waning, he 
wrote these words : — 

"I also entreated of the Lord, that I might understand 
the meaning of the Descent from the Invisible World, 
which nineteen years ago produced in a Sermon from me, 
a good part of what is now published." 



VII. 

The End of Sir William Phipps. 
1692-1695. 

The importance to the Mathers of the tragedy of 
witchcraft has warranted me, I think, in treating the 
matter by itseh'. Before we proceed, however, we 
must glance at certain other matters that were in pro- 
gress at the same time. It was not witchcraft alone, 
perhaps hardly witchcraft at all, which in 1694 brought 
to a close the administration of Sir William Phipps, and 
with it the control of the Mathers in affairs of state. 

Witchcraft was by no means the only thing that both- 
ered poor Sir William. There were French and Indian 
wars, Canada way, which he managed rather clumsily. 
And there was a great deal of political trouble at home. 
The new Charter was not popular. The people had 
been used to electing their own governors : what priv- 
ileges Increase Mather had secured for them failed, in 
the popular imagination, to balance the fact that their 
chief executive officer was a nominee of the King, and 
that he proved, after all, by no means the sort of 
man they would have chosen. Honest enough, every- 
body knew, this hot-headed, uneducated, self-made, self- 
willed Sir WiUiam was in nobody's opinion a man of 
much administrative ability. The democratic spirit 
declared itself more and more vigorously against him : 



THE END OF SIR WILLIAM P HIP PS. 125 

not a few ministers took that side. And the old theoc- . 
racy, represented by the Mathers, found itself at last"" 
quite divorced from the popular party ; and at most a 
power behind the throne of the royal Governor. From 
this time on, in fact, the politics of Massachusetts was 
not a question of theocracy and democracy, but was 
rather a struggle, which culminated in the American 
Revolution, between the royal power and the rights of 
the people. 

The chief figure in the opposition was Elisha Cooke, 
a gentleman who had been associated with Increase 
Mather in the mission to England, and who had bit- 
terly opposed the acceptance of the new Charter. A 
few of Sewall's notes show how matters ran in Boston. 
In November, 1692, Cooke came home; and on the 
15 th he kept a day of thanksgiving for his safe ar- 
rival. Most of the Boston worthies joined him in the 
festival ; but Sewall notes : " Mr. Mather not there, 
nor Mr. Cotton Mather. The good Lord unite us in 
his Fear, and Remove our Animosities." The next 
May, in the teeth of an election sermon preached by 
Increase Mather on the great benefit of primitive coun- 
sellors,^ Cooke was elected a member of the Gover- 
nor's Council, along with certain other opponents of 
the government. On the ist of June, Sir William 
used his privilege to veto the election of Cooke. 
''June 8," notes Sewall, "Mr. Danforth labours to 
bring Mr. Mather and Mr. Cook together, but I think 
in vain. Is great wrath about Mr. Cook's being re- 
fused, and 'tis supposed Mr. Mather is the cause." 
We begin to see more of what poor Cotton Mather 
1 See Quincy, I. 73. 



126 COTTON MATHER. 

meant by resolving not to waste precious time in 
personal quarrels towards the end of 1692. On the 
nth of July, Sewall notes, Cotton Mather prayed at 
the opening of the Council ; he prayed there again 
on the 15th; and in the afternoon of that day the 
Governor dissolved the assembly, being '' much dis- 
gusted . . . about the not passing of the Bill to regu- 
lat the house of Representatives." 

The bill in question was passed on the 25th of No- 
vember. To all appearances a mere political device 
for strengthening the power of the government at a 
given moment, it has proved perhaps the most mis- 
chievous measure in the whole madcap history of 
American legislation. So far as the Mathers were re- 
sponsible for it, they did their utmost to weaken the 
character of legislative bodies throughout this conti- 
nent. i\s a matter of fact, in 1693, the opposition to 
the government was far stronger in Boston than in the 
country : chiefly, if not wholly, to weaken the opposi- 
tion in the legislature, this bill provided that a repre- 
sentative must reside in the place he represented. It 
has been followed in practice throughout America : as 
a consequence no American constituency is able to- 
day to elect a competent representative unless, by the 
blessing of providence, a competent person happens to 
reside among them. And as, in the nature of things, 
the most able men generally congregate in large cities, 
the greater part of every American legislature is com- 
posed of men personally insignificant. 

But even this device proved of little use. In addi- 
tion to his other troubles, Sir William was always get- 
ting into hot water on his own account. Early in 



THE END OF SIR WILLIAM PHIPPS. 127 

his administration, he had a difficulty with the collector 
of the port of Boston, which culminated in a hand-to- 
hand fight. In January, 1693, another difficulty with 
the captain of a royal frigate brought upon the captain 
a caning at the hands of Sir William in the streets of 
Boston. It was chiefly for this, apparently, that he was 
summoned to England to explain his conduct. After 
all, the godly, self-made adventurer had not proved 
the Governor the Mathers hoped for : he was not one 
to make friends for the new Charter. 

A few of Sewall's notes for November, 1694, give 
the most vivid pictures of his last days in New 
England. 

"Nov. I. . . . Capt. Dobbins refusing to give Bail, the 
Sheriff was taking him to Prison, and Sir William Phips 
rescued him, and told the Sheriff He would send him, the 
Sheriff, to prison, if he touched him, which occasioned 
very warm discourse between Him and the Lieut. Gover- 
nour." — "Nov. 3. . . . Governour adjourns the General 
Court. . . . Several of the Council desired a dissolution, 
lest some Emergency should require the Calling of an As- 
sembly, and this adjournment bind our hands : but the 
Governour would not hearken to it. . . . Said, This Court 
is dissolved to such a time ; being put in mind of his mis- 
take, said I mean Adjourn'd." — " Nov. 9. . . . Lieut. Gover- 
nour and Council dine at James Meers's : The Treat was 
intended for the Governour; but is so offended at Capt. Dob- 
bins Imprisonment, that He comes not, nor Mr. Mather the 
Father, nor Son . . . ; so chair at the uper end of the 
Table stands empty. Note. Mr. Cotton Mather was sick 
of a grievous pain in his face, else He had been there, as he 
told me afterward." — "Seventh-day, Nov. 17th. . . . Just 
about Sunset or a little after, the Governour goes from his 
House to the Salutation Stairs, and there goes on board his 



128 COTTON MATHER. 

Yatcht; Lieut. Governour, many of the Council. Mr. Cot- 
ton Mather, Capts. of Frigatts, Justices, and many other 
Gentlemen accompanying him. 'Twas six oclock by that 
time I got home, and I only staid to see them come to sail. 
Guns at the Castle were fired about seven : Governour 
had his Flagg in main top. Note. Twas of a seventh day 
in the even when the Governour came to Town, and so tis 
at his going off. both in darkness : and uncomfortable, 
because of the Sabbath." 

Stoughton, the Lieutenant Governor, was left at the 
head of affairs for several years. In March, Cooke 
was elected to the Council, where he served annually 
till Joseph Dudley's time. 

Two or three more notes of Sewall's tell a little of 
Cotton Mather, and all the rest there is to tell of poor 
blundering Sir William. 

" Monday, April 29, 1695. . . . About 2 P. M. a very 
extraordinary Storm of Hail, so that the ground was made 
white with it, as with the blossoms when fallen. . . . Mr. 
Cotton Mather dined with us, and was with me in the new 
Kitchen when this was; He had just been mentioning that 
more Ministers Houses than others proportionably had 
been smitten with Lightening : enquiring what the meaning 
of God should be in it. Many Hail Stones broke throw 
the Glass and flew to the middle of the Room. ... I got 
Mr. Mather to pray with us after this awfull Providence ; 
He told God He had broken the brittle part of our house, 
and pray'd that we might be ready for the time when our 
Clay-Tabernacles should be broken. ... I mentioned to 
Mr. Mather that Monmouth made his descent into England 
about the time of the Hail in '85, . . . that much cracked 
our South-west windows." 

Whether Sewall thought this storm equally portentous 
does not appear. But on 



THE END OF SIR WILLIAM P HIP PS. 129 

'" iMay 5, 1695. About 3 hours News comes to Town 
of the death of Sir William Phipps, Feb. i8th, at which 
people are generally sad. Lay sick about a week of the 
new Fever as 'tis called." — "May 6th. . . . Mourning 
Guns are fired at the Castle and Town for the Death of our 
Governour." — '-May 8, 1695. I visit my Lady, who takes 
on heavily for the death of Sir William. Thinks the Lieu- 
tenant and Council were not so kind to him as they should 
liave been. 



VIII. 

Harvard College. 
1636-1701. 

From this time on, the history of Massachusetts 
takes a course of less interest to us. Stoughton, the 
Lieutenant Governor, remained at the head of affairs 
until 1699, when Lord Bellomont, who had been ap- 
pointed Governor some time before, came to Boston. 
Two years later Bellomont died. In 1702 Joseph 
Dudley, who had been virtually an exile from Massa- 
chusetts since he was shipped to England with Andros, 
was appointed Governor. There is reason to believe 
that his appointment was much advanced by a letter 
from Cotton Mather, which Dudley showed the King, 
stating that " there was not one minister nor one of 
the Assembly but were impatient for his coming."^ 

The chief public affairs in Stoughton's time were con- 
nected with the French and Indian wars in Maine. In 
Bellomont's time, the legislature established a judiciary 
in a form which ultimately led to trouble with Eng- 
land, and began the series of squabbles with the Gov- 
ernor about his salary which lasted well through Cotton 
Mather's day. Bellomont's most notable act was per- 
haps the suppression of piracy : it was he who brought 
Captain Kidd to justice. In brief, the political history 

1 Palfrey, III. 183. 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 131 

of Massachusetts up to the time of Joseph Dudley may 
be said to have been a slowly strengthening opposition 
in the legislature — and so among the people — to the 
power of the Governor and the Crown. 

With all this the Mathers had far less to do than 
with the pohtics of earher times. It is very typical of 
their history, and of the history of the theocratic party 
in Massachusetts, that, from this time on, their most 
notable public activity concerns not the Province, 
but Harvard College. It will be worth our while, then, 
hastily to glance at the history of this institution. 

This has been very thoroughly written by President 
Quincy. In 1636, only seven years after the arrival of 
Governor Winthrop with the first Charter of the Colony, 
the General Court voted four hundred pounds "towards 
a School or College." Two years later, the Rev. John 
Harvard, a young graduate of Cambridge who had emi- 
grated to Charlestown, died, leaving half of his estate 
and his whole library to the new College. With this 
encouragement, the College was immediately opened, 
and, in honour of its first benefactor, received the name 
of Han-ard. In 1642 a Board of Overseers was estab- 
lished, consisting of the Governor and Deputy Gover- 
nor, all the magistrates, and the teaching elders of the 
six adjoining towns. In 1650, a charter was granted 
by the General Court, placing the government of the 
College in the hands of a Corporation, consisting of 
the President, the Treasurer, and five Fellows named 
in the act, and empowered, with the counsel and con- 
sent of the Overseers, to perpetuate themselves. Un- 
der this charter, after various vicissitudes and some 
very radical changes in the nature of the Board of 



132 COTTOX MATHER. 

Overseers, — who are now elected by the alumni, — the 
College is governed at the present day. 

Amid the utmost poverty and privation the College 
began its work, which was chiefly to educate the more 
promising youth of the Colony to a point which should 
render them efficient ministers of the GospeMn the in- 
evitable days when the emigrant ministers should be no 
more. What manner of men it turned out we should 
know by this time : both Increase and Cotton Mather 
were graduates of Harv^ard ; and Sibley's ^ amazingly 
careful biographies of those who graduated before 1689 
prove the Mathers to have been typical men. It is curi- 
ously characteristic of Harvard, however, that the first 
two Presidents — if we except, as the records do, a rather 
disreputable person who was for a little while made mas- 
ter of the school — were decidedly inclined to heresy 
in the matter of baptism. Earnest, devoted, learned, ill 
paid, half starved, they gave every energy to the College ; 
and before Chauncy, the second President, died, he be- 
gan to see the gifts to the College come in, which have 
continued to the present time. The third President, 
Leonard Hoar, came from England to take office. For 
some obscure reason he was unpopular : there were 
intrigues against him, which encouraged the students — 
in the words of Cotton Mather ^ — to turn '' cud-weeds, 
and, with great violations of the fifth Commandment, 
set themselves to travestie whatever he did and said'' 
He resigned, and is believed to have died of a broken 
heart. His successor, Urian Oakes, seems to have 
been the leader of the intrigues against him : he seems 

1 Harvard Graduates, 3 vols. 

2 Magnalia, IV. I. § 5. 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 1 33 

to have been orthodox, however, if we may credit the 
words in which, as we have seen, he addressed young 
Cotton Mather in 1678.^ When he died, in 1681, In- 
crease Mather was chosen his successor. He decHned, 
and so did another reverend gentleman ; but John 
Rogers, who became the fifth President of the Col- 
lege, survived his inauguration less than a year ; and in 
1685 Increase Mather finally accepted the office. He 
took it on condition that he should not reside at Cam- 
bridge, but should be permitted to continue, at the 
same time, his pastoral work at the Second Church 
in Boston. He held it throughout his mission to Eng- 
land : he retained it throughout the administrations of 
Phipps, Stoughton, and Bellomont, under circumstances 
which we shall have to consider in some detail. 

For what reason no man knows, the acts of the Gen- 
eral Court which founded and moulded the College 
contained no phrases which could fairly bind it to any 
sectarian policy. In 1642, //<?/)' is the only term used 
that connects the College with any distinct religious 
principle; in 1650, there appears no more stringent 
term than godliness ; and the first seal of the College, 
adopted on the 27th of December, 1643, bears only 
the word "Veritas." ^ It was not until Increase Math- 
er's time, in all probability, that affairs led to the 
adoption of the other, and far less characteristic, motto 
still in use, — " Christo et Ecclesise." ^ Whether, as 
President Quincy inclined to think, this apparently 
studied religious liberality was real, may perhaps be 
doubted : there is, I think, about as much reason for 

1 Cf. page 37. - Truth. 

^ For Christ and the Church. 



134 CO TTON MA THER. 

supposing that, at the time the charter was granted 
and the seal adopted, piety, godUness, and truth meant 
to the men who used these terms nothing more or less 
than orthodox Calvinism ; that to have defined this 
further would have seemed to them a waste of words. 
But, whatever the reason, as the political power of the 
clergy began to weaken, it became evident that there 
was a dangerous flaw in the construction of their in- 
nermost stronghold. To the defence of this, then, the 
Mathers devoted their utmost energy. 

In 1686 — the year after Increase Mather had ac- 
cepted the presidency — came, as we have seen, the final 
news of the vacating of the Charter of the Colony. 
With this, of course, fell all the minor rights that the 
Colonial authorities had granted under it, and among 
others the charter of Harvard College. For twenty- 
one years, until, in December, 1707, the old charter of 
1650 was not too regularly revived, the College had 
no settled government. Throughout this period the 
Mathers, with whomever they could get to follow them, 
fought, and worked, and prayed for a charter which 
should permanently commit the College to the care 
of men whose chief thought should be to preserve 
uncontaminated the traditions of the fathers. They 
hopelessly failed ; the College they longed to see the 
perpetual breeder of a priesthood has grown to be per- 
haps the most potent nurse of every shade of liberal 
protestantism and toleration in the English-speaking 
world. So those there who remember the Mathers at 
all nowadays either scoff at their memory or abuse it. 
But I think we shall grow to feel, as we read their 
story, that, whatever their errors, they fought their ear- 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 1 35 

nest tight with all their hearts, with all their souls, with 
all their might. 

During Increase Mather's stay in England, he was 
constantly endeavouring to get a royal charter for the 
College. In an interview with James II., on the 2d of 
July, 1688, he asked the King directly to grant a char- 
ter for the non-conformist institution. 

" ' Certainly, Syr,' " he said ; " ' they may think it hard 
diat the College built by Non-Conformists, should be taken 
from them and put into the Hands of Conformists.' The 
King replied, ' It is Unreasonable, and it shall not be.' " 

— " What ? " notes Cotton Mather in the margin, " King 
James himself declare so!"^ 

But before long poor King James was where he 
could grant no more charters, and Increase Mather 
paying court to William and Mary. He had his last 
interview with the king on the 3d of January, 169 1-2. 

" 'We have in New EriglaJtd,' " he said, as he took his 
leave, " ' a College where many an Excellent Protestant 
Divine has had his Education.' The King said, ' I know 
it.' He thereupon added, ' If Your Majesty will cast a 
favourable Aspect on that Society, it will yet Flourish more 
than ever.' The. King returned, ' I shall willingly do it.' 

— And so Elided the Fijial Conference.'"'^ 

Home again, he busied himself at once to obtain a 
new charter for the College. On the 27th of June, 
1692, the very month when the first of the Salem 
witches was hanged. Sir WilHam Phipps signed one. 
This charter vested absolute power in a Corporation of 
ten persons, every one of whom was selected by Increase 

1 Parentator, XXV. 2 Parentator, XXVIII. 



136 COTTOX MA THER. 

Mather ; and it made no provision for any kind of visit- 
ing board. It was immediately sent to England for royal 
approval. Meantime the new Corporation assembled 
as if the new charter had been thoroughly sanctioned, 
and among their first acts conferred the first honorary 
degrees. They made Increase Mather Doctor of Di- 
vinity : Leverett and Brattle, who had managed the 
College in his absence, were at the same time made 
Bachelors of Divinity. There is something significant 
in this very fact : Leverett and Brattle were men of far 
more liberal sentiment than Mather; Brattle is be- 
lieved to have given Calef much assistance in the 
preparation of his book against witchcraft ; ^ and the 
two Bachelors of Divinity proved leaders in the move- 
ment that finally drove the Reverend Doctor from 
power. 

In 1693, Increase Mather published his Election Ser- 
mon on the benefit of primitive counsellors.^ " Bene 
agere et male audire regium est," ^ was its motto; and 
in his preface he tells how he had been warned in Eng- 
land that he should find New England ungrateful for 
his public services ; and how he had replied, that he 
would go to New England and see, and that if he 
found their prognostications true he should see his 
call clear to return to England again. In spite of this 
warning, the General Court, far from sending him to 
England again, passed a vote that the President of 
Harvard College ought to reside at Cambridge. Mather, 
who had no notion of resigning his church, offered his 
resignation of the presidency to the Corporation ; they 

1 Sibley, III. 17, 18. - Cf. page 125. 

^ " It is the lot of kings to do good and to hear evil." 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 137 

refused it, and requested him to go on in the old way. 
Here matters stood in July, 1696, when word came 
from England that the King had vetoed the Charter of 
1692, for the reason that it provided no visiting board. 
The effect of this news on Increase Mather was the re- 
newal of a special assurance, which persisted for years, 
that he should once more be permitted to do work for 
the Lord in England.^ 

A note in Sewall relates what next happened. 

" Oct. 12. [1696.] Lt. Governour goes to Cambridge. 
. . . Complemented the Pressedent etc., for all the respect 
to him, acknowledg'd his obligation and promis'd his Inter- 
position for them as become such an Alumnus to such an 
Alma Mater : directed and desired the Presdt and fellows 
to go on : directed and enjoined the students to obedience. 
Had a good diner. . . . Mr. Cotton Mather took off Mr. 
Chauncy and Oakes's Epitaphs as I read them to him." 

A vivid little note I find this : Mather the father 
succeeding for the time in somehow continuing his 
power over the nursery of the old faith ; Mather the 
son busy meantime in gathering material for the great 
Church History which remains its most notable literary 
monument. 

It is Sewall, too, who gives the most vivid account of 
what came next. On the 17th of December, 1696, the 
Council passed a new charter. 

"Dec. 18," writes Sewall, " Mr. Mather, Allen, Willard, 
C. Mather give in a paper subscribed by them, shewing 
their dislike of our draught for the Colledge charter, and 
desiring that their Names might not be entered therein. 

1 Quincy, I. App. IX. 



138 COTTON MATHER. 

One chief reason was their apointing the Govr. and 
Council for Visitor. ^ . . . I doe not know that I ever saw 
the Council run upon with such a height of Rage before. 
The Lord prepare for the Issue. . . . The Ministers will 
go to England for a Charter, except we exclude the Council 
from the Visitation." 

In 1697 Increase Mather drew up a new charter, 
which was somehow fought through the legislature. 
And the first public indications of the troubles that 
were brewing within the College appeared in the drop- 
ping of Leverett's name from the Corporation. " How 
the Deputies will resent it," writes Sewall,^ " I know 
not." And there was a petition of some ministers that 
Increase Mather be sent to England to push the char- 
ter; and the General Court refused it; and Mather 
threatened to resign. Late in the same year, Sewall 
gives another glimpse of the poor man's troubles : — 

" Nov. 20. Mr. Willard ^ told me of the falling out be- 
tween the President and him about Chusing Fellows last 
Monday. Mr. Mather has sent him word, He will never 
come to his House more till he give him satisfaction." 

Next January came another petition that Mather be 
sent to England, likewise rejected. And at the end of 
1698, the General Court renewed the vote that Presi- 
dent Mather " remove to the College, and take up his 
residence there." 

Two accounts are extant of the interview that fol- 
lowed, on the 8th of December, between Mather and 

^ I. e. Lay overseers threatened the predominance of the clergy. 
2 Diary, I. 450. 

•* Minister of the Old South. The year before, Willard and 
Mather had joined in protesting against the charter of 1696. 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 1 39 

the representatives of the General Court who brought 
him this order. 

'• I told them," writes Increase Mather himself,^ "that 1 
was discouraged. . . . Col. Byfield said . , . every one in 
the House desired that I should be the President, etc. I 
objected that I was not willing to leave my preaching work. 
Mr. SewalFs reply was, I might preach to the scholars by 
expositions every day. 1 told them, I could not go till the 
church spared me." — "Oh," he writes two days later, 
"that God would accept of service for me in England 
according to my faith ! '' 

Sewall's account of the interview runs thus : — 
" Twas near 7 in the even before we got thither. I 
began, and ask'd excuse for our being so late. The reason 
was, most of us were come from a Wedding : However, I 
hop'd it was a good omen, that we were all coming to a 
Wedding. . . . We urged his going all we could; I told him 
of his Birth and education here ; that he look'd at work 
rather than Wages, ^ all met in desiring him, and should 
hardly agree so well in any other. Mr. Speaker, in behalf 
of the House, earnestly desired him. Objected want of a 
House, Bill for Corporation not pass'd ; Church ; [his at- 
tachment to it] Must needs preach once every week, which 
he prefered before the Gold and Silver of the West Indies. 
I told him would preach twice aday to the students. He 
said that . . . was nothing like preaching." 

All of which Mather repeated formally in a letter to 
Stoughton on December 18.^ And putting the ques- 
tion of leave of absence to his church a few weeks later, 
he had the satisfaction of being refused. In April, 

^ Quincy, I. 480, 481 

2 Among other troubles was a dispute about salary- 

3 Sewall's Diary, I. 493, 494. 



I40 COTTON MATHER. 

1699, came news that the King would not approve the 
charter of 1697. 

The next month Lord Bellomont, the new Governor, 
arrived. In his message to the General Court, on the 
2d of June, he expressed a wish to promote a charter 
for the College. A few days later, Cotton Mather had 
a spiritual experience perhaps worth recording here. 
On the 7th of June, 1699,^ one of his children was very 
ill. He had had a particular faith that she should 
recover ; but as she grew worse, " being in distress lest 
my particular Faith should prove but a Fancy, and a 
Folly, and end in Confusion," he held a special fast ; 
and the child mended forthwith, 

" God has ordered this Matter," he goes on, " for my 
Encouragement about several greater points of my partic- 
ular Faith not yett accomplished. . . . This day as I was, 
(may I not say ?) in the Spirit, it was in a powerful manner 
assured me from Heaven, That my Father shall one Day 
be carried into England : and that he shall there glorify the 
Lord Jesus Christ : And that the particular Faith which 
has Introduced it, shall be at last made a matter of wonder- 
ful glory and Service unto the Lord. And thou, O Mather 
the Younger, shalt Live to see this Accomplished. And 
thy Son ^ too shall glorify the Lord Jesus Christ, after thou 
also hast followed thy Father into the Kingdom of God." 

On the 7th of July,^ the Mathers and six other min- 
isters addressed to the General Court a request that in 
the new charter 

" our holy religion may be secured to us and unto our 
posterity, by a provision, that no person shall be chosen 

^ The diary for 1699 is in possession of the American Anti- 
quarian Society. 

2 Cf. pages 175-177. ^ Quincy, I. 99. 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 14 1 

President, or Fellow, of the College, but such as declare 
their adherence unto the principles of reformation, which 
were espoused and intended by those who first settled the 
country and founded the College, and have hitherto been 
the general profession of New England." 

Such a provision was inserted in the charter passed 
on the 13th of July ; none of the previous charters had 
contained anything of the kind. On the i6th, Cotton 
Mather had another ecstatic assurance that all should 
be well. On the i8th, Lord Bellomont objected to the 
religious proviso in the new charter, which he probably 
deemed a direct attack on the Church of England. 
This charter, then, and the fervent particular faiths of 
the Mathers came to nothing. 

Meantime another matter had been growing that 
sorely troubled the Mathers. Quincy tells the story 
clearly. We have seen already that Leverett and 
Brattle had begun to show a tendency to heterodoxy. 
In 1697, Cotton Mather published a Life of Jonathan 
Mitchel, Minister of Cambridge.^ To this Increase 
Mather prefixed a dedicatory letter to the church in 
Cambridge and the students in the College there. The 
substance of this long assertion of the pristine princi- 
ples of New England is, that " to admit persons to par- 
take of the Lord's Supper, without any examination of 
the work of grace in the heart, would be a real apos- 
tacy and degeneracy from the churches of New Eng- 
land"; and he warns the tutors of the College not to 
become " degenerate plants or prove themselves apos- 
tate." This was a direct attack on Leverett, Brattle, 
and their friends. They were not slow in retorting. 

1 Reprinted in the Magnalia, IV. IV^ 



142 CO TTON MA THER, 

At the beginning of 1698, they organized a new church 
in Boston on new principles, expressly rejecting " the 
imposition of any public relation of experiences " as 
the condition of admission to the Lord's Supper.^ In 
November, 1699, ^^ I^^^- Benjamin Colman arrived 
to take charge of the new church ; an accomplished 
young man, graduated at Harvard College seven years 
before, and since that time resident in England, where 
under William of Orange clever Dissenters had been 
having a very comfortable time. A few notes from 
Cotton Mather's diary and from Sewall's ^ will tell the 
rest of the story. 

"7th, loth m. [1699]," writes Cotton Mather, "A com- 
pany of headstrong men in the town, the chief of whom are 
full of malignity to the holy ways of our churches, have 
built in the town another meeting-house. . . . And with- 
out the advice or knowledge of the ministers in the vicinity, 
they have published, under the title of a manifesto^ certain 
articles that utterly subvert our churches. . . . This drives 
the ministers that would be faithful unto the Lord Jesus 
Christ, and his interest in the churches, unto a necessity 
of appearing for their defence. No little part of these ac- 
tions most unavoidably fall to my share." 

Two days later Colman called on Sewall, who talked 
at some length about the startling manifesto. 

" At his going away," writes Sewall, " I told him, If God 
should please by them to hold forth any Light that had not 
been seen or entertained before ; I should be so far from 

1 Quincy, I. 130, 131. For a somewhat fuller account of their 
principles, see Palfrey, III. 170, seq. 

2 All these are cited in the Appendix to the first volume of 
Quincy. 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 143 

envying it, that I should rejoice in it: which he was much 
affected with." 

On the 5th of January, 1 699-1 700, poor Cotton 
Mather's mood was far from placid. 

" I see Satan," he writes, " beginning a terrible Shake 
unto the Churches of New England, and the Innovators 
that have sett up a New Church in Boston, (a New one 
indeed !) have made a Day of Temptation among us. The 
men are Ignorant, Arrogant, Obstinate, and full of malice 
and slander, and they fill the Land with Lyes, in the misrep- 
resentations whereof T am a very singular sufferer. Where- 
fore I set apart this day again for prayer in my study, to 
cry mightily unto God." 

But by the 2 1 st of January, he had so far controlled 
himself as to be able to draw up a proposal of terms 
on which the old party and the new might agree. 
Sewall tells the rest of the story for the moment. 

"Jany. 24th. The Lt. Govr. calls me with him to Mr. 
Willards, where out of two papers ^ Mr. Wm. Brattle drew 
up a third for an Accomodation to bring on an Agreement 
between the New-Church and our Ministers ; Mr. Coleman 
got his Brethren to subscribe to it. — Jany. 25th. Mr. L 
Mather, Mr. C. Mather [and others] wait on the Lt. Govr. 
... to confer about the writing drawn up the evening be- 
fore. Was some heat ; but grew calmer, and after Lecture 
agreed to be present at the Fast which is to be observed 
Jany. 31. — Jany. 31. Fast at the New Church. Mr. Cole- 
man reads the Writing agreed on. . . . Mr. L Mather 
preaches, Mr. Cotton Mather prays. . . . Mr. Mather gives 
the Blessing. His text was, Follow peace with all men and 

1 This phrase seems to me to dispose of Quincy's charge 
that Cotton Mather falsely claimed the authorship of the agree- 
ment. One of the " two papers " was doubtless his. See 
Quincy, L 237. 



144 COTTOiX MATHER. 

Holiness. Doct. must follow peace as far as it consists 
with Holiness. . . . C. Mather pray'd excellently and pa- 
thetically for Mr. Colman and his Flock. Twas a close 
dark day." 

The next May, Lord Bellomont in his address to 
the General Court advised that " the settlement of the 
College will best be obtained ... by addressing the 
King for his royal charter of privileges." Accordingly 
the General Court prepared an address to his Majesty, 
humbly soliciting his approval of a charter they pre- 
pared in form. The influence of the Mathers appears 
in the fact that neither Leverett, nor either of the 
Brattles, the Rev. William, and Thomas, the Treasurer, 
was named in this charter. How matters now ap- 
peared to Cotton Mather, his diary tells.^ On the 
1 6th of June, 1700, he writes in much detail of his 
particular faiths about the College : he was holding a 
day of fasting and special prayer. 

" I beg'd of the Lord/' he goes on, "that if my particular 
Faith about my Father's voyage to Englatid, were not a 
Delusion, He would please to Renew it upon mee. All 
the while my Heart had the Coldness of a Stone upon it, 
and the Straitness that is to be expected from the bare 
Exercise of Reason. But now all on the sudden, I felt 
an inexpressible Force to fall on my Mind, an Afflatus 
that cannot be described in words ; None knows it, but he 
that has it J If an Angel from Heaven had spoken it Ar- 
ticulately, the communication would not have been more 
powerful. It was told me that the Lord Jesus Christ Loved 
my Father, and Loved mee. and that Hee took Delight in 

1 The whole passage from which I make selections is printed 
in Quincy, I. 484-486. The diary for 1700 is in possession of the 
Massachusetts Historical Society. 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 145 

us as in Two of His Faithful Servants: and that Hee had 
not permitted us to be Deceived in our particular Faiths, 
but that my Father should be carried into England, and 
there glorify the Lord Jesus Christ before his passing into 
Glory: . . . and that I shall also live to see it; and that 
a Sentence of Death shall be written on . . . our par- 
ticular Faith, but the Lord Jesus Christ, v^rho Raises the 
Dead, and is the Resurrectiofi and the Life shall give a 
New Life unto it ! Hee will do it ! Hee will do it ! — 
Having Left a Flood of Tears fetched from me by these 
Rayes ^ from the Ijivisible World on my study-floor, I 
Rose and went unto my chair. There I took up my Bible, 
and the First place that I opened was at Act 27. 23. 24. 
25,2 ' There stood by me an angel of God, whose I am, and 
whom I serve, saying, Fear not, thou must be brought be- 
fore Caesar.' ... A New Flood of Tears immediately 
gush'd from my flowing Eyes, and I broke out into these 
Expressions: ' What ! Shall my Father yett appear before 
Ccesar? Has zxi Angel from Heaven told me so? And 
must I believe what has been told me? Well then. It 
shall be so! It shall be so!'" — "And now," runs the 
next entry, "what shall I say? When the affair of my 
Father's agency . . . came to a turning point . . . some 
of the Tories so wrought upon the Governour that he 
deserted ^ it. The Lieutenant Governour . . . appeared 
with all the Little Tricks imaginable to confound it. It 
had, for all this, been carried, had not some of the Council 
been inconveniently called off. . . . The whole affair of 
the College, was left unto the management of the Earl of 
Bellomont. So that all expectation of a Voyage for my 

1 Not rages, as Quincy read. 

^ Like most of Cotton Mather's quotations, this is not quite 
accurate in detail. It is characteristic of his eternal hurry, that, 
while he rarely misses the spirit of a quotation, he is apt, even 
when citing Scripture, to make verbal slips. 

3 Not deferred, as Quincy read- 
10 



146 COTTON MATHER. 

Father unto England on any such occasion, is utterly at an 
end. What shall I make of this Wonderful matter. Wait ! 
Wait ! " 

Before he had waited a month, his particular faith 
had a worse buffet still. On the loth of July, the Gen- 
eral Court, far from bidding Increase Mather go stand 
before Caesar, voted more decidedly than ever that the 
President of Harvard College ought to reside there ; 
and that Increase Mather should " repair to Cam- 
bridge as soon as may be." Sewall visited him the 
same day, 

" at three in the afternoon. I told him the Honor of Atha- 
nasius, Malnit sedem quani Fidel syllabavi imitare .-"^ 
Worthies of N. E. left their Houses in England, and came 
hither where there were none to preserve ^ Religion in its 
Purity. Put him in mind how often God had renewed his 
Call to the work which was to be consider'd. That were 
19 in the Council: and had every vote." 

But poor Increase Mather, who had stood before 
three Caesars, had no mind to " leave preaching to 
1500 souls . . . only to expound to 40 or 50 Chil- 
dren, few of them capable of Edification by such Exer- 
cises." ^ At least he must get the consent of his church, 
the official representative of the 1500 souls. To his 
grief, they gave their consent. A note of Cotton 
Mather's early in July tells the story. 

" There was a coincidence of many things," he writes, 
"to incline the Church unto such a Vote; but the chief 

1 " He would rather change his home than a jot of his faith." 

2 May not this be a misprint iox persecute? 

3 I. Mather to Stoughton, 16 December, 1698. Sewall's 
Diary, I. 493. 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 147 

was, The Ferment and the Tumult of the Countrey, about 
the State of the too-corrupted College, and the Danger of 
its falling into 111 Hands, if my Father should not have an- 
swered the Cry of the publick about it. And it was the 
apprehension of his best Friends, that if my Father had 
now declined going to Cambridge, the Clamour and Re- 
proach of all the Land against him, would have been insup- 
portable ; he must have Died with Infamy. My Father 
upon the vote of the Church immediately (the next week) 
hastens away to Reside at Cambridge. But I am now 
plunged into Distresses of two sorts. First, The Strangely 
melancholy and Disconsolate Condition of Mind which my 
Father has carried with him to Cambridge., (the place, which 
of all under Heaven, was most Abominable to him) fills me 
with Fear, what may be the Event. If he would be cheer- 
ful, all would be easy; but his Spirit is prodigiously un- 
framed, unhing'd and broken ; and if the Lord be not very 
merciful to Him, the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ will 
suffer more Dishonour from his Uneasiness than I am wil- 
ling to see. Lord, Rate off, and Chain up, the Tempter, 
that falls upon my poor Father with such molestation. 
Secondly, I am now Left alone in the care of a Vast con- 
gregation, the largest in all these parts of the world. I am 
afraid, lest now they grow foolish and froward, and lest the 
Devices of Satan may some way or other prevail to scatter 
them, or Lest some Distemper arise among them. And, I 
am feeble; and in this Town I have many Enemies: in- 
deed, all the Enemies of the Evangelical Interests are 
mine. I need a more than ordinary prudence and patience, 
and the Defence of Heaven." 

For all this time there were other troubles entangled 
with those directly concerning the College. The dis- 
sensions with the Brattle Street people had broken out 
afresh. Before the reconciliation of January, 1700, 
the two Mathers had, " with many prayers and studies, 



148 COTTON MATHER. 

and with humble resignation of our names unto the 
Lord, prepared a faithful antidote for our churches 
against the infection of the example, which we feared 
this company had given them." ^ The reconcihation 
stopped the publication of this antidote : but in March, 
the Mathers published it, — a book entitled the " Or- 
der of the Gospel." It was a direct, violent attack, in 
general terms, on the innovations that were creeping 
into the churches of New England. Some notes from 
Cotton Mather's diary for 1700 tell how this matter 
showed itself to him. On the ist of March, the day 
the book came out, he writes, 

"The Venome of that malignant Company who have 
lately built a New Church in Boston disposes them to add 
unto the Storm of my present persecution ; for it may bee 
never had any men more of that Character of Grievous 
Revolters., To bee walkmg with Slanders, than too many 
of that poor people have." 

On the 14th of April, he comforted himself with the 
reflection that as Christ was persecuted on earth, so 
would naturally be His faithful servants : he ought, 
then, to be thankful for his sufferings. 

" It was powerfully sett home upon my heart," he adds, 
"that I have in this Disposition an Infallible Sy7nptome, 
That my Lord Jesus Christ will ere Long fetch me away to 
Heavenly Glory, and that he will glorify me with Himself 
world without End/" On the nth of May, he had an as- 
surance "That something shall befall the Disorderly So- 
ciety of Innovators (now causing much Temptation and 

1 Cotton Mather's Diary, 21 January, 1700, quoted from 
Quincy, I. 487. For all this matter of the Brattle Street Church, 
see Quincy, Chap. VII. 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 149 

Iniquity in the place) that shall confirm these Churches in 
the Right Ways of the Lord." 

In spite of this assurance, " sundry ministers of New- 
England " published the "Gospel Order Revived," ^ — 
a vigorous reply to the Mathers' " Order of the Gospel." 
On the 4th of July, less than a week before his ecstatic 
assurance, so dreadfully disappointed, that his father 
should be carried into England, Cotton Mather writes 
that there are hardly any but his father and himself 

•• to appear with any strength of Argument or Fortitude in 
Defence of the invaded Chtirches. Wherefore I thought I 
must cry mightily unto the Lord that He would mercifully 
Direct me ... in all my feeble, but faithful Endeavours to 
serve Him . . . and preserve me from all the Devices of 
Satan . . . to blast me with Reproaches that may ... In- 
capacitate me for Eminent Serviceableness. I also thought, 
that if it be the purpose of Heaven that the Apostasy 
should go on, they that will vigourously . . . stand in the 
way of that Apostasy may be in danger of a Stroke from 
the Angel of Death, that so a way may be made for the 
Anger of God. But then I resolved ... I will oppose it, 
tho' it cost me my Life. Hereupon the Lord sent into my 
Spirit a Sweet Meditation, That my Life which I am thus 
willing to venture, shall the rather be prolonged ; and my 
Name, which I thus cast overboard, shall be the more 
precious in the Churches of the Lord." 

On the 2d of September, when poor Increase Mather 
was at work expounding to his "40 or 50 children " at 
Cambridge, Cotton Mather writes, 

" Observing how powerfully the Devices of Sataft are 
operating to bring on Apostasies and Innovations upon the 

^ For a curious contemporary comment on this controversy, 
see Sewall's Letter-Book, L 255. 



150 COTTON MATHER. 

Churches, and particularly, a Minister of some Note in the 
Churches for his piety^ having pubHshed a Book of Wretch- 
ed Novelties, which, tho' it be ojEfensive to the generalty of 
Good Men, yett is Entertained with Gladness by a carnal, 
Giddy Rising generation, I thought it my duty to defend 
the Churches." 

So he wrote a " Defence of the Evangelical Churches," 
"whereto my Father joined with me, in setting his 
Name." This was apparently the pamphlet full of 
passionate vituperation which is described by President 
Quincy. 

At the same time, another attack, and a more direct 
one, was making on the Mathers. We have already 
seen^ how profoundly unimaginative Robert Calef 
was stirred by what seemed to him the deliberately 
monstrous conduct of the Mathers in the matter of 
witchcraft. In the intervening years he had put to- 
gether his book on the subject, for which, Sibley says,* 
" he was furnished with materials ... by Mr. [Wm.] 
Brattle of Cambridge and his brother of Boston, gen- 
tlemen who were opposed to the Salem proceedings." 
Likewise gentlemen, I may add, who started the Brat- 
tle Street Church, and in College matters were leaders 
of the opposition to the Mathers. "^ An honest book, I 
have said, it seems to me ; a sensible one, if it be good 
sense to have no glimmer of imagination ; but about as 
appreciative of what the Mathers really were as a good, 
practical Yankee of to-day might be of Cardinal New- 
man. It was printed in England : it arrived in Boston 
in November, 1700. Increase Mather had it publicly 

1 Colman, I believe. 2 See page 105. 

^ Harvard Graduates, III. 17, 18. •* See page 144. 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 151 

burned in Harvard Yard, thereby doubtless increasing 
its vogue. Just at tliis moment no blow could have hit 
the Mathers harder. 

"First Calf's book," writes Cotton Mather on the 28th 
of December, " and then Coleman's do sett the people in a 
mighty Ferment. All the Adversaries of the Churches Lay 
their Hands together as if by Blasting of us they hoped 
utterly to blow up all." 

So this day he prayed and fasted. His devotions 
consisted largely of the singing of psalms. His psalm- 
book, he remarked with some surprise, opened of itself 
at places 

"the most agreeable perhaps of any that I could have 
chosen. This observation may easily be abused unto 
superstition : but yett sometimes there is an Angelical 
Agency in these occurrences. " 

But the losing fight was almost over. On the 17 th 
of October, i 700, Increase Mather, professing ill-health, 
had returned from Cambridge, desiring in a letter to 
Stoughton that another President be thought of. In 
February, 170T, Samuel Willard, Minister of the Old 
South, was made Vice President. On the 5 th of 
March, Lord Bellomont died in New York, leaving the 
administration once more in the hands of Lieuten- 
ant Governor Stoughton. On the 4th of July, Sewall 
visited him, confined to his bed, with a committee of 
the General Court, who wished to arrange an adjourn- 
ment. 

"He agreed to it," writes Sewall, "very freely. I said 
the Court was afflicted with the sense of his Honors indispo- 
sition ; at which he rais'd himself up on his Couch. When 



152 COTTON MATHER. 

coming away, he reach'd out his hand; I gave him mine, 
and kiss'd his. He said before, Pray for me! This was 
the last time I ever saw his Honor." 

Three days later the grim old Puritan was dead : he 
had been one of the crew of Andros ; with the favour 
of the Mathers he had retained office in the time of 
Phipps ; with the best light God had given him, he had 
done to death the Salem witches ; and all that is left of 
him now is the forbidding portrait in Memorial Hall, 
with the stiff open hand that tells how he was the first 
native benefactor who built a hall for Harvard College. 

The executive authority now vested in the Council. 
On the 6th of September, 1701, the General Court 
voted that Increase Mather, who had meanwhile gone 
back to Cambridge and again returned to Boston, be 
replaced by Mr. Samuel Willard, who promised to re- 
side at the College one or two days and nights in a 
week. And so the " good President " who had stood 
before Caesar, who had won for Massachusetts the Char- 
ter under which she flourished for more than eighty 
years, who had given every energy of his life to the de- 
fence of the old theocracy of the fathers, was left at 
sixty-two just what he had been at twenty-five, and 
what he remained all the rest of his life, — nothing but 
the Minister of the Second Church in Boston. 

Twenty-three years later, when Cotton Mather wrote 
his father's life, he could speak thus : — 

" His abdication was after all brought about, I will but 
Softly say, Not so fairly as it should have been. I think, 
there are Thanks due to me. for my forbearinii: to Tell the 
Stojyr 1 

1 Parentator, XXIX. See pages 183-185. 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 153 

At the time he was not so calm. It is probable 
that, ahiiost at this moment, he had the sagacity to 
make his last forlorn attempt to master the govern- 
ment, by writing to Joseph Dudley the letter which 
clinched his appointment to the governorship.^ Dud- 
ley might be grateful ; things might still go better. 
But how he took it at the moment appears most vividly 
in a note of Sewall's. 

'^ Oct. 20 [1701]. Mr. Cotton Mather came to Mr. 
Wilkins's shop, and there talked very sharply against me"^ 
as if I had used his father worse than a Neger ; spake so 
loud that the people in the street might hear him." 

Later notes of Sewall's show that some kind of rec- 
onciliation soon followed. So does a letter in Sewall's 
Letter-Book.^ But to one who has learned from Sew- 
all's artless record how close the good old man's fists 
were, the most startling of all his notes — a note that 
shows how, after all, his conscience smote him — is 
this : — 

" Octr. 9. I sent Mr. Increase Mather a Hanch of very 
good Venison: I hope in that I did not treat him as a 
Negro." 4 

i Cf. page 130. 

2 Sewall was of the Council that finally dismissed President 
Mather. 

3 Cf. pages 183-185. ^ Diary, II. 44. 



IX. 



Cotton Mather's Private Life xjntil the Death 
OF HIS Wife. 

1696-1702. 

It is during the years we have just been consider- 
ing, and the two that immediately follow, that Cotton 
Mather's diaries give us the most continuous view of 
his private life. The revised copies of his diaries 
from 1696 to 1705 are preserved. The story of In- 
crease Mather's presidency seemed important enough 
to be considered by itself. In this chapter I purpose 
telling what I have found concerning Cotton Mather's 
personal career until the death of his wife in 1702. 

In 1694, Sibley tells us, he published two books: 
a treatise of Early Religion, and a lecture on the His- 
tory of New England. In this year, too, his fifth 
child, Abigail, was born. In 1695, he pubUshed seven 
distinct books : four volumes of sermons, a book 
against the Devil, a volume of biographies of eminent 
emigrant ministers, and a Life of Queen Mary, who 
was just dead. In this year, I take it, was born his 
sixth child, Mehitabel. These were the years, we 
shall remember, when Sir William Phipps came to 
grief and died, and when Increase Mather's first 
charter for Harvard College was still in the hands 
of the King. 



PRIVATE LIFE. 155 

The next year, 1696, was that in which news came 
of the royal disapproval of the College charter; in 
which, as we have seen, Stoughton authorized Increase 
Mather to continue his presidency on the day when 
Cotton Mather was copying the epitaphs of Chauncy 
and Oakes ; the year in which the objections of the 
Mathers killed the first College charter drawn by the 
Council; the year whose close brought the fast at 
which Sewall put up his confession of penitence for his 
share in the witch trials, and Cotton Mather put his 
family into the hands of God. 

His diary 1 shows that he began the year in a state 
of depression, and closed it with more or less satis- 
factory assurances that his work was grateful to the 
Lord. The entries, which occur about once a week, 
are mostly in general terms : perhaps the most notable 
thing they show is an increasing interest in foreign 
affairs, concerning which he had occasional prophetic 
assurances. Early in the year he wrote his Life of 
Phipps, which Lady Phipps sent abroad for publica- 
tion. I have found only two or three entries which 
seem worth noting in detail.^ 

The first is for the 2 2d of February, a day on which 
he fasted, with abasement and depression, and was re- 
warded by assurances that something should come of 
his prayers for England, Ireland, and Scotland. 

" After this Day," he goes on, " I continued full of such 
Dejected and Abasing Thoughts of my own extraordinary 
Vileness as did fill mee in the Day itself. Oh ! tlie Lord 
is laying of me Low ! ... So I wrote : and so it must 

1 In possession of the American Antiquarian Society. 

2 For another, see Sparks's American Biographies, VI. 261. 



156 CO TTON MA THER. 

Come to pass. For 28. 12.1 Early this morning my 
daughter Mehitabel dyed suddenly in its Nurse's Arms : 
not known to bee dying till it was dead of some sudden 
stoppage by wind: The wind passed ovei' the Flower^ 
and it was presently goney Next day the child was 
buried : its epitaph was, " In Faith of the Resurrection 
your Bones shall flourish like an Herb." In the margin 
he notes that he "Forgot to pray for M. th^t morning" : 
reproaching himself, he found that the child was dead at 
the time. " Alas," he adds, " the child was overlaid by 
the Nurse." 

The only other notes I have copied for this year 
come in the following January. One I have already 
quoted,^ in which, on the occasion of the fast, he 
commends his family to God. The other, for the 23d 
of January, 1696-7, gives a little glimpse of fact : — 

" So extremely cold was the weather that in a Warm 
Room on a great Fire the Juices forced out at the end of 
short billets of wood by the Heat of the Flame on which 
they were laid, yett froze into Ice on their coming out." 
So he gave up a projected fast, "because I saw it impos- 
sible to serve the Lord without such Distraction as was 
Inconvenient." 

On the 29th, the weather seems to have moderated : 
at all events, he had an assurance that his consort 
should have easy travail. The next day she was out 
of order ; his servant was ill ; and little Nibby ^ fell 
into the fire, happily without much hurt. 

This year he published five books : four volumes of 
sermons, and an account of memorable experiences 
of those captured by Indians. 

1 12 = February. Mather begins his years with March. 

2 See page 122. '^ Abigail. 



I 



PRIVATE LIFE. 



157 



The next year, 1697, was that in which Increase 
Mather drew up his second charter for the College, in 
which the first application for his agency to England 
was refused, in which he threatened to resign, and fell 
out with Mr. Willard about the choosing of Fellows. 

Cotton Mather's diary for this year^ is more interest- 
ing than the last. One of its mottoes is characteristic : 
•' Tully, in his Second Book, De Natura Deorum, says, 
' Net?io Vir Magnus sine aliqiio Afflatu Divino unquam 
fiiit.' " ^ He began the year by an ecstatic birthday. 
A week later, he was writing to Connecticut for relief 
for famine-stricken Massachusetts. A few days later, 
prayer and fasting were rewarded by an assurance that 
he should '' ere long bee with the Innumerable com- 
pany of Holy Angels," and that his offspring should 
want for no good thing. And on the 27th of February 
another fast, ending with assurances of a speedy revo- 
lution in England and France, led him to resolve on 
daily prayers, like Daniel's, for the emancipation of the 
Church from captivity, and later to start a prayer- 
meeting for the coming revolution and reformation. 
The close of this note is a good example of his man- 
ner of recording his afflations in general : — 

" In the close of the Day, when I lay prostrate on my 
Floor, in the Dust, before the Lord, I obtained Fresh and 
Sweet Assurances from Him, That altho' I have been the 
most Loathsome Creature in the World, yett His Holy 
Spirit^ would with Sovereign and Glorious Grace, Take 
possession of me, and Accept mee, and employ mee, to glo- 
rify His Name exceedingly. And I successfully Renewed 

1 In possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 

- " No man was ever great without some aftlation from God." 



158 COTTON MATHER. 

my Cries unto the Lord, that Hee would visit Fra7ice^ and 
Great Britain^ speedily, with a mighty Revolution."' 

A little later, his seventh child, Hannah, was born. 
A note of Sewall's for the 8th of April gives a 
characteristic glimpse of Mather : — 

" Mr. Cotton Mather gives notice that the Lecture here- 
after is to begin at Eleven, ... an hour sooner than for- 
merly. Reprov'd the Towns people that attended no 
better; fear'd twould be an omen of our not enjoying the 
Lecture long, if did not amend." 

But it is not till August that I find in Mather's own 
diary anything else noteworthy. On the 20th, he held 
a private thanksgiving for his life, his health, his speech 
freed from impediment, his library, his dwelling-house, 
his consort, his children, his unblemished reputation, 
"and such deliverances granted unto the Countrey 
that my opportunities to be serviceable have not been 
overwhelmed in the Ruines of it." That evening he 
went into his empty church, w^here he had much 
ecstasy. In the midst of a thousand other w^orks he 
had finished his " Magnalia," his great Church History 
of New England. 

Though several years passed before this most notable 
of his w^orks was published, we may perhaps best con- 
sider it here, at the moment of its completion. Its 
scope and purpose are well expressed, I think, in a few 
words from the General Introduction : — 

" It may be, 'tis not possible for me to do a greater ser- 
vice unto the Churches on the best Island oi the universe, 
than to give a distinct relation of these great examples 
w^hich have been occurring among Churches of exiles, that 
were driven out of that Island, into an horrible wilderness. 



PRIVATE LIFE. 159 

merely for their being well-wishers unto the Reformation. 
. . . 'Tis possible that our Lord Jesus Christ carried some 
thousands of Reformers into the retirements of an American 
desart, on purpose that, with an opportunity granted unto 
many of his faithful servants, to enjoy the precious liberty 
of their Ministry, though in the midst of many temptations 
all their days, He might there, to them first, and then by 
them, give a specimeft of many good things, which He 
would have His Churches elsewhere aspire and arise 
unto; and this being done, he knows not^ whether there 
be not all done that New England was planted for; and 
whether the Plantation may not, soon after this, co?ne to 
nothing^ 

He has wTitten nothing but truth, he says : — 

" I have not commended any person, but when I have 
really judged, not only that he deserved it, but also that it 
would be a benefit unto posterity to know wherein he de- 
served it ; . . . yett I have left unmentioned some censura- 
ble occurrences in the story of our Colonies, as things no 
less unuseful than improper to be raised out of the grave, 
wherein Obhvion hath now buried them." 

That defines the whole book, I think ; it seems to me 
an honest effort, at a moment when the old order was 
changing, to preserve and emphasize all the best things 
that in the olden time had been thought, and said, 
and done. If the sons could but be brought to emulate 
the virtues of the fathers, all might still go well. And 
those old days were glorious days that filled Cotton 
Mather with enthusiasm ; and their sins and errors 
might best be tenderly forgotten. He had conceived 
the book, w^e have seen,^ in 1693. Meanwhile he had 

1 Should not this rather be " I know not " ? 

2 See page 117. 



i6o COTTOiY MATHER. 

been incredibly busy with all sorts of other matters : 
his pastoral duties, politics, the College, his incessant 
private devotions, his many other writings, including 
the great '' Biblia Americana," on which he worked for 
twenty years. 

" All the time I have had for my Church History," he 
writes, " hath been . . . chiefly that which I might have 
taken else for less profitable recreations ; and it hath all 
been done by snatches. ... I wish I could have enjoyed, 
entirely for this work, one quarter of the little more than 
two years ^ which have rolled away since I began it." 

The "Magnalia" bears throughout traces of the 
crowded haste with which it was written. It is flung to- 
gether, not composed at all. There are seven chief di- 
visions, or books : the first recounts the history of the 
Colonies ; the second contains the lives of governors and 
magistrates, closing with that of Sir William Phipps ; 
the third contains the lives of some sixty emigrant min- 
isters ; the fourth tells the history of Han'ard College, 
and contains the lives of ten eminent ministers gradu- 
ated there ; the fifth gives an account of the orthodox 
creed and disciphne of the New England churches ; the 
sixth contains a record of many remarkable providences, 
judgments, and the like, that have been experienced 
in New England ; the seventh tells of the " Wars of 
the Lord," or the various disturbances that have at- 
tacked the churches and the people there. Along with 

1 According to his own diaries, the book was begun at the 
end of 1693, ^^^ finished in the middle of 1697. This inac- 
curacy is characteristic, — palpable, unimportant. Anyway, be- 
fore the " Magnalia " was published, he revised it and inserted 
new matter. 



PRIVATE LIFE. l6l 

much new matter, these books contain reprints of at 
least fifteen volumes published separately : ten before 
the end of 1697, five after. Just as these volumes 
were naturally independent, so are all the chapters in 
the whole work. And there is no question that it is 
full of superstitions now incredible, and of hasty errors 
of date and the like. 

For all this, the '' Magnalia " has merits which dispose 
me to rate it among the great works of English litera- 
ture in the Seventeenth Century. The style, in the first 
place, seems to me remarkably good. Any one can 
detect its faults at a glance : it is prolix, often over- 
loaded with pedantic quotation, now and then fantastic 
in its conceits. But these were faults of Mather's time. 
And he has two merits peculiarly his own : in the whole 
book I have not found a Hne that is not perfectly lucid, 
nor many paragraphs that, considering the frequent 
dulness of his subject, I could honestly call tiresome. 
In the second place, admitting once for all every charge 
of inaccurate detail, I am incHned to think the veracity 
of spirit that pervades the book of very high order. 
Somehow, as no one else can. Cotton Mather makes you 
by and by feel what the Puritan ideal was : if he does 
not tell just what men were, he does tell just what 
they wanted to be, and what loyal posterity longed to 
believe them. In the third place, not even the sus- 
tained monotony of his style and temper can prevent 
one who reads with care from recognizing the marked 
individuality of his separate portraits. It was my 
conviction of this that made me, in my account of 
his grandfathers, tell their story as nearly as might be 
in his own words. A glance back at what I have 

II 



1 62 COTTON MATHER. 

said about John Cotton and Richard Mather ^ will show 
as clearly as need be the strength and the weakness 
of the " Magnalia." I have known the book for eleven 
years ; and the better I know it, the more I value it. 
Whatever else Cotton Mather may have been, the 
" Magnalia " alone, I think, proves him to have been 
a notable man of letters. 

But to return to the diary for 1697. A few days 
after his ecstasy in the empty church, he notes, as a 
serious matter, a week's journey to Salem and Ipswich. 
I believe he never went much farther from home. 
On the 1 8th of September, he held a fast, rewarded by 
assurances from Heaven, *' in a manner w^hich I may 
not utter." This probably means that a visible angel 
appeared ; for the next day he writes : — 

" The Spirit of the Lord came near unto mee ; Doubtless, 
the angel of the Lord made mee sensible of his Approaches. 
I was wondrously Irradiated. My Lord Jesus Christ shall 
yett be more known in the vast Regions of America j and 
by the means of poor, vile, sinful mee he shall be so." 
And Great Britain shall undergo a reformation, and France 
shall feel a mighty impression from the hand of Christ, 
and Cotton Mather shall be concerned in these matters. 
'^ Nor was this all, that was then told mee from Heaven ; 
but I forbear the rest." 

His next note shows a phase of him rarely seen in 
his diary. He was reputed, they say, good company : 
here, for once, he gives us a bit of his conversation. 
On the 24th of September, 

1 See pages 7-16. For an admirable example of Mather's best 
work, see his account of the last days of Theophilus Eaton, 
Magnalia, II. IX. §§ 9, 10. 



PRIVATE LIFE. 1 63 

" Discoursing with a worthy minister who lay . . . sick, 
I said unto him, To praise Christ, in the midst of Myriads 
oi Angels in Heaven, may in some respects bee as good 
as to preach Christ, in the midst of Hundreds of Mortals 
on Earth. Hee rephed, Ifs true. I added (for our Dis- 
course was managed with a certain serious and sacred 
Hilaritie), But, Syr, have you . . . thought what to say 
when you arrive among the Blessed ^«^^/j .^ Hee replied: 
Why, pray what do you intend to say ? I answered, I '1 
say, Behold, o ye Holy Spirits^ the i?tost . . . Loathsome 
Sinner that ever arrived among you ; but it is the Glori- 
ous Christ that hath brought me hither. . . . I have as good 
a Righteousness as any of you. I '1 say, Oh / you Illus- 
trious Angels, if you don^t wonderfully glorifie the Grace 
of the Lord Jestis Christ in fetching so vile a Sinner into 
these mansions, you'' I never do it. ^'' 

Just how vile the man really felt himself is hard to 
tell. One thing is certain, however : the fate that six 
days later befell his uncle, John Cotton, minister of 
Plymouth, affected him very profoundly. Sewall tells 
the story ^ : A Council of ministers " advised the 
Church to dismiss [Mr. Cotton] wdth as much Charity 
as the Rule would admit of. . . . This was for his 
Notorious Breaches of the Seventh Comandmt." A 
few days later, Sewall notes that Increase Mather " de- 
clar'd among the Ministers . . . that they had dealt 
too favourably with Mr. Cotton." On the 9th of 
October, and again on the i6th, Cotton Mather, full of 
agony for his " fallen uncle," and full of self-abhor- 
rence and of fear lest his own sins should likewise be 
condemned, prostrated himself before the Lord, and 
enjoyed assurances from Heaven. 

1 Diary, I. 460. 30 Sept., 1697. 



1^4 COTTON MATHER. 

The next notable entry shows him in a character as 
yet new to us. His daughter Katharine was getting 
old enough to take life seriously : she was past her 
fifth birthday. On November 7th, a Lord's Day, he 
writes : — 

" I took my little daughter, Katy, into my Study, and 
there I told my child That I am to Dy Shortly and Shee 
must, when I am Dead, Remember every Thing, that I now 
said unto her. I sett before her, the sinful . . . condition 
of her Nature, and I charged her to pray in secret places 
every day, . . . That God for the sake of Jesus Christ, 
would give her a New Heart. ... I gave her to under- 
stand that when I am taken from her, shee must look to 
meet with more Humbling Afflktiotis, than she does, now 
she has a . .^. TtmX&x Father 'io provide for her. ... I 
signified unto lier. That the people of God would much ob- 
serve how shee carried herself, and that I had written a 
Book, about Ungodly Children, in the conclusion whereof 
I say, that this Book will bee a forcible Witness against 
my own children, if any of them should not h^t godly. At 
Length, with many Tears, both on my part and hers, I told 
my child, that God had from Heaven satisfied me, . . . 
That shee shall be brought Ho7fie unto the Lord Jestis 
Christ. . . . I . . . made the child kneel down by me; 
and I poured out my cries unto the Lord, That Hee would 
. . . Bless her, and Save her, and make her a Tejnple of 
His Glory. It will bee so! It will bee so ! I write this, 
the more particularly, that the child may hereafter have the 
Benefit of Reading it." 

This curious note shows but one side of his domes- 
tic discipline, however. And perhaps here, as well as 
anywhere, I may mention his son Samuel's account of 
how Cotton Mather treated his children.^ He would 

1 S. Mather, Life, I. 4. 7. 



I 



PRIVATE LIFE. 165 

constantly tell them delightful stories, especially at 
table ; "■ and he would ever conclude with some les- 
sons of piety." He would constantly "' put them upon 
doing . . . Kindnesses ... for other Children," and 
'' would applaud them when he saw them delight in 
it." As soon as possible, he made them learn to write 
and copy " profitable Things." 

" He incessantly endeavoured, that his Children might 
betimes be acted by Principles of Reason and Honour. . . . 
The yfrj-/ Chastise)nent he would inflict for any ordinary 
Fault, was to let the Child see and hear hwt in an Aston- 
ishment . . . that the Child could do so base a Thing. 
... To be chased for a while otit of his Presence^ he would 
make to be look'd upon as the sorest Punishment in his 
Family. . . . The Slavish way of Education^ carried on 
vi\\\\ Raving, a7td Kicking, a7id Scourging. . . . he looked 
upon as a dreadful Judgment of God on the World ; . • . 
and express'd a mortal Aversion to it. . . . He would often 
tell them of the good Angels, who love them ; . . . who 
likewise take a very diligent Notice of them, and ought not 
in any measure to be disobliged. He would not say so 
much to them of the evil Angels, because he would not 
have them entertain any frightful Fancies about the Ap- 
paritions of Devils: But yet, he would briefly let them 
know, that there are Devils, who tempt them to Wicked- 
ness, who are glad when they do wickedly, and who may 
get leave of God to kill them for it." 

And there is every reason to think that all his chil- 
dren loved him dearly. 

But in 1697, only Katy was old enough for much 
discipline. We must back to the diary, in which there 
is little more to concern us. The rest of the notes 
refer chiefly to his devotions : he had fasts, and 



1 66 COTTON MATHER. 

thanksgivings, and ecstasies. A case of adultery in his 
church caused him special humiliation. He preached 
on peace, and forthwith ships arrived with news of 
peace. A note of Sewall's on December loth gives 
another glimpse of him : — 

" Mr. Cotton Mather was at the Townhouse Chamber 
pretty merry and pleasant : but was made sad by Col. 
Hutchinsons telling him of the death of his Unkle Mr. N. 
Mather. . . . Visited the President in the evening. He is 
sorrowful." 

That very day Cotton Mather's Life of Phipps had 
come from England. In January he was laid up with 
an epidemic influenza. On his first Sunday out he en- 
joyed angelic help to such a degree that he was seized 
next day with a *' chohc " ; but angels interfered again, 
and by Thursday he w^as well enough to preach the 
lecture. The volume closes with two closely written 
pages of texts he preached from during the year. 

In this year (1697) he published nine books: his 
Lives of Mitchell, Phipps, and Moodey; three devo- 
tional works ; another book about captivity among 
the Indians ; a volume of sermons ; and a volume of 
hymns. 

The next year, 1698, was that in which the second 
application for Increase Mather's agency was refused ; 
and at the close of which the General Court renewed 
its request that the President remove to Cambridge, 
and the church refused consent. It was the year, 
too, when the Brattle Street Church was founded. 

The mottoes in the diary for 1698 ^ are the queerest 
of all. 

1 In possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 



PRIVATE LIFE. 167 

" Ego Sic semper et ubique Vixi," runs the first, " tan- 
quam ultimam Diem, numquam redituram, Consumerem.^ 
EuMORP. C. M. Can't say so ! " Then come three other 
Latin phrases, with the notes, " C. M. would say so ! " 
Lett C. M. . . . take the Caution ! " and " C. M. heartily 
subscribes to This ! " 

The first month of the year shows him extremely 
ecstatic. On the 4th of March, in a secret fast, he put 
his Church History and another book into the hands 
of Christ ; and it was told him from Heaven 

" that they shall bee carried safe to England, and there 
employed for the Service of my glorious Lord." — " The . . . 
Beginning of this month," he goes on, " brought with it lit- 
tle that was Remarkable, besides multipHed Experiences of 
Strange Dejections and sad Buffetings upon my mind, just 
when I have been going to do some special service for the 
Lord Jesus Christ in my public ministry, and then a more 
than Assistafice and Eiilargenient in the service itself." 

Later he notes that a gentleman has remarked that 
good men speak well of Cotton Mather, and bad men 
ill. On the 7th of April, a lecture day, 

"The Lord having Helped me beyond my expectation in 
preparing a Discourse for the Lecture,^ Hee yett more 
gloriously Helped mee, in uttering of it, unto a vast As- 
sembly of His people. 1 first Laid my Sinful mouth, in the 
Dust on my Study-floor before the Lord, where I cast my- 
self, in my supplications for His Assistance and Accept- 
ance, as utterly unworthy thereof. But the Lord made my 
sinful mouth to become this Day, the Trumpet of His 

1 '* I have always and everywhere lived as if each day were 
my very last." 

2 This was the " Bostonian Ebenezer," reprinted as an ap- 
pendix to the first book of the " Magnalia." 



1 6 8 CO TTOM MA THER. 

glory; and the Hearts of the Inhabitants of the Town were 
strangely moved by what was Delivered among them." 

Immediately afterwards he fell ill of a fever, from 
which he recovered in a duly thankful mood. 

He eagerly renewed his prayers and fasts. On the 
13th of May two of his special subjects were the Col- 
lege and the scandals in his church ; on the 20th his 
particular subject was one of his flock, to be censured 
for adultery, — " and one whom I had formerly, with 
many Cries to Heaven, rescued from the Hands of 
Evil Angels, which had a Bodily possession of her." 
On this occasion he humbled himself as a very vile 
sinner ; and when the time came for pronouncing the 
censure, he enjoyed an extraordinary presence of the 
Lord. On the 29th comes a long note, in which he 
recapitulates the astonishing verifications of some of 
his particular faiths about public affairs, and goes on to 
assert his faith that certain prophesies point to a speedy 
completion at the end of one hundred and eighty years, 
of the "Half Reformation " of 1517 : " Make mee a 
very Holy, prayerful, watchful, and prudent man," he 
writes, " that I may bee fitt for my master's use." The 
next note, wTitten on the i oth of June, is in Latin : he 
confesses to the Lord " peccatorum meorum aggrava- 
tionem" \^ he prays that the blood of Christ may wash 
him clean, and he enjoys an assurance that he shall 
actually see angels once more. The close of the note 
is worth quoting : — 

" Latin^ haec scribo, ne chara mea Conjux, has chartas 
aliquando inspiciens, intelligat.'' - 

1 "A heavy addition to my sins." 

2 "I write this in Latin, lest my dear wife, sometime looking 
over these papers, should understand it." 



PRIVATE LIFE. 169 

The next note is a very long one about Calef, a man 
" who makes httle conscience of Lying," and who is 
attacking Mather for " public Asserting of such Truths 
as the Scripture has taught us about the existence and 
Influence of the Invisible Wofid.'" This man's book 
was about to be sent to England for publication. Cot- 
ton Mather prays that the Lord 

" Forgive him, and do him Good even as to my own 
Soul." — " But then," he goes on, " I could not but cry unto 
the Lord that Hee would Rescue my opportunities of serv- 
ing my Lord Jesus Christ from the Attempts of this man 
to damnify them. ... So I putt over my Calumnious Ad- 
versary into the Hands of the Righteous God. . . . And I 
now Beleeve, That the Holy Angels of my Lord Jesus 
Christ, whose operation this Impious man denies (which 
is one great cause of his enmity against mee !) will do a 
wonderful Thing on this occasion." 

Immediately afterwards, he remarks that pressure of 
work has caused him to give up the practice of taking 
notes as he listens to sermons : his attention is conse- 
iquently flagging ; he must take notes again. 

A month of ecstatic afflations and reactions followed. 
Towards the end of July, 

" my Mind Being . . . Easy, and Ready to Dy, I ... be- 
sought of the Lord, nevertheless, that Hee would yett 
spare my life, to work for Him, a Little more, among His 
people." And one Lord's Day in August, he writes 
thus : " Whereas one of the Last Times I was at the 
Lords-Table^ I made my particular Applicadon unto the 
Lord Jesus Christ in the way of Sacramental Coninmnion^ 
to obtain from Him, the Cure of that One Distemper, 
An Heart Wandering with Impertinent Thoughts in Re- 
ligious Exercises., I must now Record that I have seen an 
Extraordinary Success of my Faiths making those Appli- 



I 7 O CO TTON MA THER. 

cations. On the Lords-day particularly I know not that 
one sentence passed mee, in all the Five prayers made by 
Father, or One Head or Text of all the Long Sermon 
preached by him, in the Forenoon, but what my Heart ac- 
companied with some Agreeable Ejanilatioji. And my 
own Services in the Afternoon were under the Special 
Operation of Heaven," 

On the 5th of September, he went to Salem for five 
days. Two of his notes during this considerable jour- 
ney are worth recording. The first is this : — 

" Finding, That whenever I go abroad, the ciiriosity and 
vanity of the people discovers itself in \.\\€\x great Flocking 
to hear me . . . causes me . . . exceedingly to Hti7nble 
myself before the Lord, and cry from the Dust unto Him 
that the fond expression of the people, may not be chastised 
upon myself, in His Leaving of inee\o any Inconvenience. 
By this Method, I not only am in a Comfortable Measure 
kept from the Foolish Taste of popular Applause in my 
own Heart, but also from the Humbling Dispensations from 
Heaven, whereto the Fondness of the people might other- 
wise Expose mee." 

The other is this : — 

" One Day, while I was at Salem, I Retired into the 
Burying place, and att the Grave of my dear Younger 
Brother 1 there, I could not but fall down on my knees 
before the Lord ; with praises to His Name, for grant- 
ing the Life of my dead Brother to be writt, and spread, 
and Read among His people, and bee very serviceable; 
and for sparing me, a barren wretch, to survive these 
many years upon the Earth, to Serve His people, in 
Several parts of the World. I then considered, What 
if I were speedily to bee called away by Death, after 
my younger Brother? I found my Spirit, Gloriously 

1 Nathaniel, ob. 16S8. Cf. page 81. 



PRIVATE LIFE. 1 71 

Triumphing in the Thought of going by Death, to bee with 
the Lord Jesus Christ, and aijiong his Angels. But when 
I further Thought o^ Staying to Glorify Him, in the midst 
of many Temptations., among his people here, I did, at 
present, because of my Age, prefer This ; and Request it 
of the Lord." 

Some three weeks later, he went to Reading. On 
the way, 

" riding over a Bridge, one of the Rotten poles upon it 
Broke : and my Horse broke thro' and broke in, and sank 
down his very Breast. I chose rather to keep the Saddle, 
than go off into the River j and the Horse, to the Aston- 
ishment of my Company Rose again (tearing off a Shooe 
in his Rising) and Leap'd over, with mee safe upon him. 
How happily do the creatures all serve us, while wee are 
serving their and our Lord, the Blessed Jesus." 

In the middle of October came inspiring news from 
Medfield. A deaf old woman there had been greatly 
stirred by reading a book of Cotton Mather's, and had 
presently recovered her hearing ; she remained piously 
afraid " that shee is not thankful enough unto the Lord 
Jesus Christ for so great a mercy." The same month 
Cotton Mather preached at the execution of a young 
woman for child-murder.^ 

In this October, too. Cotton Mather took his final 
leave of his fallen uncle, John Cotton. Some months 
before Sewall had seen the disgraced man at Plymouth. 

"March 10," ... he writes, "Had large discourse in 
the even with Mrs. Cotton, Mr. Cotton, Mr. Rowland.^ I 

1 Sarah Threeneedles. Sewall's account of her is vivid : 
Diary, I. 486. 
'^ Their son. 



172 COTTON MATHER. 

told Mr. Cotton, a free confession was the best way ; spake 
of Davids roaring all the day long and bones waxing old 
whilest he kept silence. . . . When ready to come away, 
March 11. I said his danger was lest catching at shadows, 
he should neglect the cords thrown out to him by Christ 
and so be drown'd. Some of my last words to him was 
Kisse the Son, lest he be angry ! This was in the house 
between him and me alone. Just as was mounting, He 
desired me to pray for him till I heard he was dead." 

John Cotton was now called to take charge of a 
church in South Carolina. He came to take leave of 
his nephew. They prayed together with heartfelt pa- 
thos. And the broken man's last words were a solemn 
denial of *' the most and worst of the charges against 
him." 

The remaining months of the year passed amid 
Cotton Mather's habitual ecstasies and activity. In 
November he preached at the execution of some mur- 
derers, where the assembly was so vast that he had to 
climb into the pulpit over the heads of the people. In 
January, little Nancy ^ fell into the fire, without per- 
manent injury. But her father took the matter very 
seriously. 

" The fire that hath wounded the child," he writes, 
" hath added a strong fire to the zeal of my prayer for her: 
and God has now raised my prayer for her to this degree 
of a particular Faith in her behalf. If this Writing of her 
poor Father ever come to bee Readd by her, Lett her give 
Thanks to God, that ever Hee cast her into a Fire which 
thus enflamed the supplications of her Father for her." 
He resolved that he would be more attentive to his family 
duties, and finally determined to " see whether there be 

1 His daughter Hannah, born early in 1697. 



A 



PRIVATE LIFE. 173 

nothing further that I may do, to save the Children of 
my flock from falling into the unquenchable Fire of the 
Wrath of God." 

About this time, too, " a few Leisure minutes in the 
evening of Every Day, in about a Fortnight or Three 
weeks Time, so accomplished me I could write very 
good Spanish." So he composed a body of Prot- 
estant religion for the conversion of Spanish America. 
Later in the year he fell ill again, and was much de- 
pressed with fear of premature old age. The record 
closes with four pages of texts from which he has 
preached in his public ministry during the year. 

In 1698 he pubHshed six works: two discourses, 
and a preface to a third ; a history of the Non-Con- 
formists j a devotional volume ; and a pastoral letter 
to English Captives in Barbary. 

The next year, 1699, was that in which news came 
that the College charter of 1697 was disapproved, and 
in which, under Bellomont's advice, the new charter 
was drawn that contained the religious proviso which 
made Bellomont disapprove it. It was the year, too, 
in which Coleman arrived and published his manifesto, 
and the Brattle Street Church was finally opened, and 
the Mathers prayed and preached there. We have 
already seen what Cotton Mather wrote in his diary 
about these public matters.^ 

His diary for 1699 - shows his personal and pastoral 
experiences going on just as before. Two or three 
notes are perhaps worth remembering. He sent his 
Spanish book to a Jew who turned up in Boston ; he 

1 See pages 140, 142, 143. 

2 In possession of the American Antiquarian Society. 



I 74 COTTON MA THER. 

translated some of the Psalms into French verse \ he 
heard of bears on the Ipswich road ; he was much dis- 
turbed by an impostor named May, who pretended to 
be a minister and made trouble, but ultimately ran 
away, having been detected in very unministerial over- 
tures to the ewes of his flock ; ^ and when in Cotton 
Mather's opinion the Church of England was conspir- 
ing against him, he sent the conspirators a message, 

"That tho' I am everyway Little, yett I hope, thro' the 
Help of Christ, I may Live to do for them the same kind- 
ness that Sampson did for their philistine Brethren, and 
pull down their Temple about their Ears." 

But what makes this year notable, besides its public 
history, is what happened in his family. His relations 
with his father were growing more and more intimate 
and tender ; at every turn he sustained and comforted 
the worried old President ; he shared and encouraged 
his particular faith that he should by and by do great 
works for Christ in England. The other family mat- 
ters he tells of I shall mention in detail. 

Towards the end of February, little Katy's head- 
dress caught fire, and the child was severely burned. 
As she lay in a fever, her father was assured that this 

" Blessed Affliction . . . shall prove the salvation of my 
child. It shall bee so ! It shall bee so ! Lord, How much 
ought I to Love Thee, when Thou dost Rebuke and Chas- 
ten 7He.^^ 

The same day Mrs. Mather's mother died. 
" I count it a Singular Favour of God unto mee," writes 
Cotton Mather, " (and it might bee so unto her/) that the' 

1 The curious may find a pretty full account of May in the 
Magnalia, VII. VI. § 9. 



PRIVATE LIFE. 175 

shee was Delirious the First Night of her Illness, yett 
shee had the Free Use of Reason all the Rest of the Lit- 
tle Time: and hereby I enjoyed an opportunity/"^/- Two 
Dayes together, to Talk with her, zxi^ pray with her, and 
Do all that it was possible for mee to Do, in assisting her, 
about the Great Acts of Resigning her Spirit unto the 
Lord. She was a pious Woman, and one full of prayers 
and Alms ; and tho' shee were of a very Fearful Temper., 
and was particularly in her Life-Time under some Slavish 
Fear of Death, yett as her Death approached, shee com- 
fortably gott over it." 

In June, little Nancy fell ill. Reading in the Book 
of Job, her father broke off to pray that, like Job, he 
might retain three daughters. 

" I purposed," he writes, " that I would grow yett more 
Fruitful in my Conversation with my Little Birds, and Feed 
them with more frequent and charming Lessons of Re- 
hgion." And he resolved to start schools, to make more 
pastoral visits, to give away more copies of his book about 
a " Family Well- Ordered," to write a book for the Indians. 
" Lord, pitty mee," he begs, " Assist mee, Accept mee! " 

The child did not mend ; but his Bible, opening by 
chance at Mark 10. 13-16,^ assured him that she should 
live. Then he prayed for her again, and had fresh as- 
surances, and she grew better ; and, as we have seen,^ 
he took this for an omen of good concerning his par- 
ticular faith about the College. 

This particular faith, we may remember, was accom- 
panied by an assurance that his son should glorify the 
Lord Jesus Christ after he himself had followed his 

1 " Suffer the little children to come unto me," etc. 
^ See page 140. 



176 CO TTON MA THER. 

father into the kingdom of God. At the moment he 
had no son ; he had had none but the malformed child 
whose fate he attributed to witchcraft. 1 But his wife 
was again near her time, and on the 8th of July showed 
symptoms of travail ; so he made a fast to obtain mercy 
for his family and his ministry. 

" In the Evening of this Day," he goes on, "near eleven 
o'clock my Consort fell into her Travail. Just before this, 
the Text with a meditation whereon I chose to entertain 
my Family at our evening-prayers was that in Joh. 16. 21. 
A woman when shee is in Travail hath sorrow, because her 
Hour is Come ; but as soon as shee is delivered of the 
Child, shee Remembreth no more the Anguish, for Joy 
that a Man is born into the World. After I had com- 
mended my Consort unto the Lord, I Laid mee down to 
sleep, after midnight, that I might be fit for the Services of 
the Day Ensuing. But after one a clock in the morning I 
awoke, with a concern upon my Spirit, which oblig'd mee 
to Rise, and Retire into my Study. There I cast myself 
on my knees before the Lord, confessing my Sins that ren- 
dered mee unworthy of His Mercy, but imploring His 
Mercy to my Consort, in the Distress now upon her. While 
my Faith was pleading that the Saviour who was Born 
of woman would send His good Angel to Releeve my 
Consort, the people ran to my Study-Door, with Tidings 
That a So7i was Born tmto 7nee. I continued then on my 
knees, praising the Lord ; and I received a wonderful Ad- 
vice from Heaven, That this my Son, shall bee a Servant 
of my Lord Jesus Christ throughout eternal Ages. Hee 
was Born about three Quarters of an Hour past One, in the 
morning of the (Lords-Day) gd. 5m. ^ — an Hearty, and 
Lusty, and comely Infant. ... In the Afternoon, I Bap- 
tised my Son, and in Honour to my Parent, I called him, 

1 See page 116. - July 9, 1699. 



PRIVATE LIFE, 177 

Increase. After which, Retiring to my Study, it was 
again assured mee from Heaven, That this Child shall glo- 
rify my Lord Jesus Christ, and bee with Him, to Behold 
His Glory." 

Ill October came sad news from Carolina. The 
plague had broken out in Charleston, and poor Uncle 
John Cotton had been stricken down at the beginning 
of his pastoral work there. In the diary is a brief 
note about him. But the letter which Cotton Mather 
wrote the same day to his uncle's faithful widow, who 
had been waiting at Plymouth for a chance to rejoin 
her husband, is more touching. I will quote a little 
from that, then. 

" In their confusion, they tell us not the precise Time 
of his Death ; nor do they relate any Circumstances of it, 
only that hee lay sick Two Days, and hee Dy'd the Third, 
which is the period, wherein the sick of that pestilential 
Distemper use to dy. That circumstance will make you 
think of Lazarus^ and you'l join with mee in hopes That 
my uncle was one whovi the Lord loved. I need not say 
unto you, how near the Death of so beloved a Friend goes 
to the Hearts of his Relatives, . . . and in a special man- 
ner to mine. I had not many Friends on Earth like him. 
But in the midst of our sorrowes, . . . wee have a peculiar 
satisfaction in the Lord's accepting my uncle to Dy with 
Honour in the service of the Gospel and kingdom. — As it 
was no great mercy (I beleeve) unto Plymouth, for their 
Laborious, and good-spirited, and well-tempered Pastor to 
be driven from them, so it was a great Mercy unto my uncle 
to bee employed in gathering a church for the Lord Jesus 
Christ in a Countrey that had never seen such a Thing, 
from the Beginning of the world." ^ 

1 Mather Papers, 403. To Mrs. Joanna Cotton, 23 October, 
1699. 

12 



178 CO TTOJV MA THER. 

In this year, 1699, Cotton Mather published nine 
separate works : a history of the Indian wars ; a state- 
ment of the orthodox faith of New England ; the 
'< Family Well-Ordered"; his Spanish book, of which 
part was reprinted separately ; an account of religious 
impostors ; a book for sailors \ and a book called the 
"Serious Christian." He also edited a collection of 
Cases of Conscience, made at a meeting of ministers 
at Cambridge. 

The next year, 1700, as we have seen, was very 
troublous. Increase Mather, disappointed of his 
agency, deceived in his particular faith, was finally 
forced to Cambridge ; the Brattle Street controversy 
broke out again, and waxed fierce ; and Calef's book 
arrived. What Cotton Mather wrote about these 
matters we have read already.^ 

The other notes in the diary for 1700^ show few 
new traits. His children were ill : little Increase had 
a terrible time with convulsions ; Nibby's head-dress 
caught fire, as Katy's had the year before ; and Nancy 
had a serious disorder. In the course of the year his 
ninth child, and third son, Samuel, was born. 

A few of his notes, however, are worth remembering. 
In April, 

" A Gentleman came to mee with a Desire that I would 
write a Sheet upon the horrid Evils of Debauching the 
Indians by Selling Drink unto them: a crime committed 
by too many in the country; a crime fruitful in wickedness 
and confusion." 

So he wrote the book : it would do good, he thought. 
A little later, on a lecture day, he writes of 

1 See pages 1 45-1 51. 

2 In possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 



PRIVATE LIFE. 179 

" Torturing pains in my Head, which have diverse days 
molested mee ; (such as I have so often found praeludious 
unto my doing some special service for my Lord Jesus 
Christ, that I cannot but have particular Thoughts about 
the Original of them.) " In spite of them he prepared 
his lecture. ''And now. When I came to my public Ser- 
vices, I felt a Wonderful Force from Heaven, Strengthen- 
ing, and Assisting, and Enlarging of mee. . . . The Vast 
Assembly, which was come together, saw That the Lord 
was with mee of a Truth — Now, o my Soul, Feed, Feed 
upon these Experiences." 

In June he held a special fast. 

" I this day putt up my Church History," he writes, 
" and pen down directions about the publishing of it. It 
. . , has lain by me, diverse years, for want of a fit oppor- 
tunity to send it. A Gentleman, just now sailing for Eng- 
land, undertakes the Care of it; . . . and by his Hand I 
send it for London. O my Lord Jesus Christ, lett thy 
good Angels accompany it." 

In October, he had doubts whether his habit of 
giving away good books was not too expensive \ and 
indeed his son Samuel says ^ that he sometimes gave 
away a thousand volumes a year. But he rebuked his 
doubts, and looking for a sign soon found one : calling, 
for "pure religion," on a widowed gentlew^oman, he 
was offered as many books as he chose to take from 
the late President Chauncy's library ; he took about 
forty, which raised his own library to something near 
three thousand volumes. It was a sore trial to him a 
little later, though, when Calef 's book arrived, and his 
own Church History had not even gone to press. A 

1 Life, II. I. 16. 



l8o COTTOX MATHER. 

number of pious friends joined him in more than one 
day of prayer about this. 

Another note of this year has a charm of its own. 

" There was an old man," it runs, " (called Ferdinando 
Turyl) scarce known to me. ... On a Saturday night 
[28d, 7m.] I was very strongly accosted in my sleep, with 
a Dream, of this importance. That this old man was 
brought into my Sight and that it was (I know not how) 
^2\6.ViXi\.on\^, Take Notice of tJiis Old Man. . . . Speak to 
him. Do for him. On the Day following, I saw the Old 
Man, at our public sermons, very attentive : (where I 
suppose he had rarely attended.) On the Day after this, 
I mett the Old Man in the Street, and I Lett fall some such 
words as these unto him : How (T ye do., Old Man. I am 
glad to see you still in this World: I pray God, prepare 
you for ajwther; I suppose it wonH be long before you are 
called away : Can I do you no service ? And so I turned 
from him. On the Day after that the old man came to me 
at my House: and I then Instructed him, how to prepare 
for Death : and I gave him a Little Book (of Grace Tri- 
umphant) further to assist him in it : Adding a peece of 
money to Encourage him. Afterwards he came to me 
several times : but in about seven weeks, after our first 
Interview, he Dyed suddenly. Going to his Funeral, I 
was told (from some who did not understand how much I 
had been concerned for him) and afterwards . . . from 
people of the House where the old man Lived, That he had 
been a poor Carnal Sorry old man until near seven weeks, 
before he dyed : but in his Last Six or Seven Weeks, they 
had observed a Wonderful Change upon him : he spent his 
whole Time in praying and Reading, and the Little Book 
(of Grace Triumphant^ was his continual companion 
Day and Night. They never saw a man so altered ; and 
they are verily persuaded he dyed a Regenerate Man. — 
Truly I have several Times observed That God hath 
strangely stirred up my Heart sometimes to visit persons, 



PRIVATE LIFE. l8l 

that were Strangers to me, and employ my particular 
methods, to excite and assist their giving themselves to 
Him. . . . And they have presently after dyed with great 
symptoms of Regeneration upon them." 

On the 1 8th of January, Cotton Mather mentioned 
to his w4fe and his father a matter that troubled him 
deeply. In spite of many prayers, he could not feel 
a faith that his baby Samuel would serve the Lord 
in his churches. So, though the child was " lusty and 
heavy," he feared it would die in infancy. On the 
yth of February comes this note : — 

" The Evil that I feared is come itpoii nie. On Tuesday 
night this week, my little son Samuel, was taken with very 
sad Convulsions. They continued all Wednesday incura- 
ble, and we were all that day in continual expectation of 
his expiration. But he lived all Thursday, too, and out- 
lived more than a hundred very terrible Fitts. The Con- 
vulsions of my own mind, were all the while, happily 
composed and quieted; and with much Composure of 
Mind, I often and often in prayer Resigned the Child unto 
the Lord. Preaching the lecture, on Thursday, while we 
were every minute Looking for the Death of the Child, I 
chose to insist on that Joh. 19. 25.. / k7tow, that i7iy Re- 
deemer Lives J as a matter of satisfaction to us, at the Sight 
of our Dying Friends. On Thursday, about midnight, an 
odd thing fell out. The child, coming out of One of its 
worst Fitts most unaccountably fell a Laughing, and this 
held for diverse minutes; unto the amazement of the Spec- 
tators, who indeed were so amazed, that they could hardly 
keep from Swooning. After This, it had no more such 
Fitts as before ; but Lingered along, till about ten a'clock 
this morning, when one of its fitts carried it off." 

Cotton Mather preached as usual on Sunday, the 
9th. On Monday, the child was buried. Its epitaph 
was, '* Not as they that have no Hope." 



1 82 COTTON MATHER. 

The last note in the volume tells how friends have 
insisted on publishing a vindication of the Mathers 
from the attack of Calef, — a " laudable example of a 
people appearing to vindicate their injured pastors 
when a storm of persecution is raised against them." 
There are six pages, too, of an address to an assem- 
bly of ministers concerning an " offensive book about 
Churches " ; and four pages of notes of texts preached 
from. On the back cover is a memorandum through 
which a pen has been very lightly drawn : — 

" Ab A?nico Satis Adulat07'e ^ 
ON Cotton Mather. 

"For Grace and Art and an Illustrious Faine 
Who would not look from such an Ominous Name ? 
Wliere Two Great Na7nes their Sanctuary take, 
And in a 77/ /r^^ combined, a Greater make. 
" Too Gross flattery for me to transcribe ; (tho' the po- 
etry be good.) " 

In 1700, Cotton Mather published eighteen distinct 
works : five devotional books ; three sermons ; four 
monitory letters, including that about selling drink to 
Indians and one to Indians themselves in their own 
tongue ; a pamphlet against balls and dances ; an ex- 
posure of religious impostors ; two books for young peo- 
ple and children ; a Defence of Evangelical Churches ; 
and another statement of the old Principles of New 
England. 

1 " By a sufficiently flattering friend." — This verse is a pal- 
pable imitation of Dryden's lines on Milton: 

"Three poets in three distant ages born," etc. 



PRIVATE LIFE. 183 

The next year, 1701, was that in which Bellomont 
died, and Stoughton ; in which Willard was made Vice 
President of the College, and in which, amid all the 
heat of the Brattle Street controversy and Calefs 
attack, Increase Mather was excluded from the pres- 
idency. 

It is notable that Cotton Mather's diary contains 
very little about these terribly grave matters. In fact, 
as I have read his diaries, nothing has impressed me 
more than his resolute abstinence from evil speaking. 
He had a hot temper and a quick tongue. But he did 
his best not to leave behind him written records that 
should defame any man. It would be hard, I think, to 
find another diary so long and so free from scandal. 
To get a clear notion of how he really felt at this mo- 
ment, then, we must turn to Sewall again. 

In the last chapter, I cited two of Sewall's notes.^ 
Here are a few more : — 

"Oct. 20. Mr. Cotton Mather . . . went and told Sam,^ 
That one pleaded much for Negroes, ^ and he had used 
his father worse than a Negro, and told him that was his 
Father. I had read in the morn Mr. Dod's saying; Sanc- 
tified Afflictions are good Promotions. I found it now a 
cordial. And this caus'd me the rather to set under my 
Father and Mother's Epitaph, — Psal. 27. 10.^ It may be 
^t would be arrogance for me to think that I, as one of 
Christ's Witnesses, am slain, or ly dead in the street. — 
October 22. 1701. I . . . speak with Mr. Cotton Mather 
at Mr. Wilkins's. I expostulated with him from I Tim. 

^ Seepage 153. 2 Sewall's son. 

2 Sewall had published a tract against slavery. 
^ " When my father and my mother forsake me, then the 
Lord will take me up." 



1 84 COTTON MATHER. 

5. I. Rebuke not an elder. He said he had considered 
that: I told him of his book of the Law of Kindness for 
the Tongue, whether this were correspondent with that. 
Whether correspondent with Christ's Rule: He said, hav- 
ing spoken to me before there was no need to speak to me 
again; and so justified his reviling me behind my back. 
Charg'd the Council with Lying, Hypocrisy, Tricks, and I 
know not what all. I ask'd him if it were done with that 
Meekness as it should ; answer'd, yes. Charg'd the Coun- 
cil in general, and then shew'd my share, which was my 
speech in Council : viz. If Mr. Mather should goe to Cam- 
bridge again to reside there with a Resolution not to read 
the Scriptures, and expound in the Hall : I fear the exam- 
ple of it will do more hurt than his going thither will doe 
good. This speech I owned. Said Mr. Corwin at Read- 
ing, upbraided him, saying, This is the man you dedicat 
your books to ! I ask'd him If I should supose he had 
done something amiss in his Church as an Officer ; whether 
it would be well for me to exclaim against him in the street 
for it. (Mr. Wilkin would fain have had him gon into the 
iiier room, but he would not.) I told him I conceiv'd he 
had done much unbecoming a Minister of the Gospel, and 
being caird . . . to the Council, . . . I went thither. . . . 
2 Tim. 2. 24. 25.I— Sign'd Mr. Mather's order for ^25. 
Hamerd out an Order for a Day of Thanksgiving. — 
Oct. 23. Mr. Increase Mather said at Mr. Wilkins's, If I 
am a Servant of Jesus Christ, some great Judgment will 
fall on Capt. Sewall, or his family. — Oct. 24. Rainy day. 
... I got Mr. Moody to copy out my Speech, and gave 
it to Mr. Wilkins that all might see what was the ground 
of Mr. Mather's Anger. . . . Mr. Wilkins carried [it] to 
Mr. Mathers ; They seem to grow calm." 

1 "And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gen- 
tle unto all men, apt to teach, patient ; in meekness instructing 
those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give 
them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth." 



PRIVATE LIFE. 1 85 

On the 30th of November, Sewall writes : — 

" I spent this Sabbath at Mr. Coleman's [church], partly 
out of dislike to Mr Josiah Willard's cutting off his Hair, 
and wearing a Wigg : . . . Partly to give an example of 
my holding Comunion with that Church who renounce the 
Cross in Baptisme, Humane Holy days etc. as other New- 
english Churches doe. And I had spent a Sabbath at the 
Old Church, and at Mr. Mathers." ^ 

In Sewall's Letter-Book we find how the quarrel 
ended. On December 31, 1701, he wrote to Cotton 
Mather thus : — 

" Sir, — I once intended an Answer to yours of the 3Qth 
of Octobr. last, principally as to some matters of fact there- 
in recited. But since you were pleased to sit with me last 
Tuesday was fortnight, and to honour my Pue, with pub- 
lishing there the very acceptable News of Liberty again 
granted to our dear Brethren of the Palatinat, I do now 
Remise, Release and forever quit claim, as to any personal 
Controversy we were lately managing at Mr. Wilkins's. It 
has been my thought ever since, and the consideration of 
this being the last day of the year, suffers me to delay it 
no longer. And at the same time I assure 5'ou that I am 
your truly loving friend and humble Servant S. S." 

In Sewall's Letter-Book for this year is one other 
document worth remembering. On October 6th, he 
and Isaac Addington wrote a long letter of advice to 
the gentlemen who were about to start a new college 

1 The Old Church was the First ; Mr. Mather's, the Second ; 
Mr. Willard's, the Old South, the Third; Mr. Colman's, the 
Brattle Street, the Fourth. There were as yet no other Congre- 
gational churches in Boston ; and Sewall was doing his best to 
make the brethren dwell together in unity. — And concerning 
Willard's wig, cf. pages 34, So. 



1 86 COTTON MATHER. 

in Connecticut. They enclosed hints for an act of 
incorporation ; and went on, 

" We should be very glad to hear of flourishing Schools 
and College at Conecticut, and it would be some relief to 
us against the Sorrow we have conceived for the decay 
of them in this Province." 

Sewall and the Mathers agreed in feeling that Har- 
vard was lost to orthodoxy ; and no three men hailed 
with more prayerful enthusiasm the rising star of Yale. 

Cotton Mather's diary for 1701 ^ shows the general 
condition of his activity, his enthusiasm, and his affec- 
tions unchanged. In the beginning of the year, he was 
much excited by Calef 's book. 

" One Vile Tool," he writes on the 5th of April, " namely 
R. Calef, 2 . . . employed by [the Enemies of the Churches] 
to go on with his Filthy Scribbles to hurt my precious 
opportunities of glorifying my Lord Jesus Christ," — dis- 
poses him to special fast and prayer. And on the nth, 
" because I would bespeak the Lord thrice^"' he summoned 
six friends, for the third time, to pray with him that " the 
Lord would send his Angel to stop the Adversary in the 
Course of his Wickedness [Which the Lord will do !] " 

The other matter which seems most on his mind is 
his Church History, concerning which his prayers and 
assurances were frequent throughout the year. On 
the 13 th of June came a letter from Mr. Broomfield, 
in London : Mr. Robert Hackshaw had agreed to 
print the book at his own expense. 

1 In possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 

2 This opprobrious mention of a name, a very rare thing in 
Cotton Mather's diary, indicates his overwrought condition. 
Cf. pages 105, 150. 



PRIVATE LIFE. 187 

" I told him," wrote Mr. Broomfield, " 6/r, God has 
answered Mr. Mather's prayers — He declared he did it 
not with any expectation of Gain to himself, but for the 
Glory of God, and that he might be a means to midwife so 
good a work into the World. And did you know him so 
well as I do you would believe him." 

But in September came news of some complications 
about the printing: on the 27th, Cotton Mather held 
a special fast for the History, being also moved to sup- 
pHcations by the fact that his father-in-law, after the 
orthodox manner of New England, was already " upon 
a second marriage." Among his other memoranda for 
the year, the most notable seems to be that he had 
started thirteen or fourteen " private meetings." He 
believed in organizing the work of the Lord : through- 
out his life he was getting together prayer- meetings, 
and societies for the suppression of disorders ; working 
with the commissioners to conv^ert and civilize the In- 
dians ; and so on. 

I find but four notes in 1701 which are worth re- 
membering in detail. In September came news that 
a friend had been killed in the wars. Cotton Mather 
immediately went to pray with the widow ; and found 
with her another widow, her sister. 

" Now in my prayer," he goes on, "I found myself 
strangely diverted from the Condition of the person to 
whom only I intended my Visit. I was as it were com- 
pelled so to word my prayer as take in all along the con- 
dition of her Sister ; even as if my prayer had been cheefly, 
if not only, for her. I wondered a little at my frame in this 
matter. But the Spirit of the Lord knew what I did not 
know. Within Two Days there arrived Intelligence that 
the young man, the husband of the supposed widow to 
whom I gave my visit, was yett living." 



1 88 COTTON MAT FIE R. 

On the 3d of October, he held a thanksgiving for 
his health, for the defeats of the " subtil and raging 
malice " of his enemies, for the safety and prospects 
of his Church History, and for his opportunities to do 
good by preaching and printing. 

" But there was another signal article,'' he goes on, " cf 
my praises to the Lord on this day. And this was the 
Confluence of Blessings, which I enjoy in my dearest Con- 
sort, who bore me company in some of the duties of the 
day. Her piety, the agreeable charms of her person, her 
obliging Deportment unto me, her discretion in ordering 
my and her Affairs and avoiding everything that might be 
dishonourable to either of us, and the lovely offspring that 
I have received by her, and her being spared unto me for 
more than fifteen years : These are things that I should 
thankfully acknowledge before the Lord.'* 

At the end of the year come two notes without date. 
The first concerns the Church History, which he had 
prayed for time and again. 

" All that I have to add," he writes, " is That when I am 
committing my Church History (which great work runs great 
hazard of miscarrying) into the hands of the Lord Jesus 
Christ, I receive wonderful Assurances (I think, I know) 
from Heaven That the Lord will accept it, and preserve it, 
and publish it, and that it shall not be lost. An Heavenly 
Afflatus causes me sometimes to fall into Tears of Joy, 
assured that the Lord has heard my supplications about 
the matter. And now, its having been thus long delayed, 
and obstructed and Clo2;g'd, proves but an opportunity for 
that prayer and Faith, which if I had gone without, the 
publication of that book would not have proved near so 
sweet a mercy to me. But if it should miscarry after all, 
O my God. what confusion would ensue upon me ! " 



PRIVATE LIFE. 189 

The second of the undated entries is a copy of part of 
a printed letter, expounding from personal experience a 
passage of Baxter, to the effect that whoever has a special 
virtue will probably be defamed for the contrary vice. 

" It has in some former years commonly happened unto 
me," he writes, " That when I visited, in the way of my 
pastoral Duty, persons possessed with Evil Spirits, the 
persons, tho' they knew every one else in the room, yett, 
thro' the unaccountable operation of the Evil Spirits upon 
their Eyes, I must appear so Dirty, so ugly, so Disguised 
unto them, that they could have no knowledge of me. I 
have a thousand times thought, That the Lord ordered 
This for some Intimation unto me, That when Times oj 
Temptation come, wherein Evil Spirits have so much 
operation on the Minds of my people, as they have on the 
eyes of Energumens, a Minister of the Lord Jesus Christ 
that will be faithful unto his Interests, must Look to be all 
over Disguised by Misrepresentation unto the Minds of 
them that are under the power of Te^nptatioJiJ'' 

On the cover of the volume are these lines : — 

"A Good Note in a Little Book entituled A Spiritual 
Legacy. Pray for those you Love, And assure yourselves 
you shall never have comfort of his Friendship for whom 
you pray not." 

It is a very curious fact, that the diary for this most 
troublous of years shows, on the whole, more spiritual 
calm than any of the preceding. Mather seems to have 
realized this himself. On the 6th of December, he was 
afraid lest he "fall into Security." 

In 1 701 he published nine works : four volumes of 
sermons ; a poem addressed to an old gentlewoman 
afflicted with blindness ; a preface to his friends' an- 
swer to Calef ; a book on the Greek Churches ) a book 



1 90 CO TTON MA THER. 

on the Wonders of Christianity ; and a book concern- 
ing which he writes as follows : — 

" Many (it may be, more than seven) years ago, a Book- 
seller going from hence to London^ carried certain Manu- 
scripts of mine with him, declaring his Intentions to publish 
them. He carelessly left them in the Hands of ... a 
Bookseller there ; who sometime after dyed ; and I could 
never hear what became of my Manuscripts. ... A friend 
of mine going the last Summer for Loiidoit, did . . . En- 
quire after my Manuscripts ; and strangely recovering of 
them, he carried them to another Bookseller, who pub- 
lished them. . . . The Book, which has had such a Resur- 
rection from the Dead^ has this Title, Death Made Easy 
AND Happy." ^ 

The year 1702 brought to Boston Joseph Dudley, 
the new Governor. As we have seen, it is believed that 
a letter of Cotton Mather's urging his popularity in 
Massachusetts — a popularity which there is reason to 
fear that Mather either invented or imagined — had 
much to do with his appointment.^ Son of the old 
Puritan Governor, Thomas Dudley, Joseph Dudley had 
from the first appearance of Randolph in Massachusetts 
been a pronounced Royalist. He had been President 
of the provisional government which held power until 
Andros arrived. Under Andros he had held high of- 
fice ; and with him he had been overthrown and sent to 
England for trial by the Revolution of 1689. Since that 
time he had been virtually an exile, but had enjoyed 
several honors. As Chief Justice of New York he had 
hanged Leisler, the leader there ol such a revolu- 
tion as had driven Dudley from Massachusetts. As 

i Sibley, Harvard Graduates, HI. 76. 
2 See page 130. 



PRIVATE LIFE. I91 

Lieutenant Governor of the Isle of Wight, and later as 
a member of Parliament, he had been high in royal 
favour. And now, as the official representative of 
Queen Anne, — for William of Orange died in March, 
1702, — he returned triumphantly to Massachusetts. 
This final triumph he perhaps owed to the influence of 
the Mathers, whose crushing defeats were probably not 
appreciated in England. They believed that he would 
be grateful, that with his help something might still be 
done to preserve the system of the fathers. On June 
nth, the day he arrived, there was a grand official 
banquet at the Town-house, and "Mr. Mather crav'd a 
blessing and Mr. Cotton Mather Returned Thanks." ^ 

But Cotton Mather's diary for 1702 ^ tells little of all 
this ; and much of matters that came nearer to him. 
" Prophesia quae dicit aliquid tale futurum impletur per 
aliquid tale," ^ is its motto. His first entry is this : — 

" Thursday. On a Thursday just Thirty-Nine years ago, 
I first appeared in the World. I cannot express either my 
Amazements at the Goodness and Mercy of God, in sparing 
me thus far beyond my expectation to enter upon the For- 
tieth year of My Age : (methinks, Forty sounds Old and 
Big!) or my Distresses in Reflecting upon my Sinful and 
foolish misspend of my Irrevocable Time. (Alas how little, 
how nothing have I done in all this Time !) I considered 
these things a little this Day, in my Supplications before 
the Lord. But more on the Day following, which was 
with me a Day of prayer, (albeit I did three Dayes ago 
keep a Day of Thanksgiving in my Study.) " 

^ Sewall's Diary, II. 59. 

2 In the possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 
■3 " A prophecy that some such thing shall be is fulfilled by 
some such thing." 



192 COTTON MATHER. 

He notes then how he had started a society for the 
Suppression of Disorders, and another for the Propaga- 
tion of the Christian ReUgion. On the 1 4th of March 
he held his first recorded vigil : all the rest of his life 
he held these night-watches of prayer and fasting, as 
well as those he kept by day. And the same month 
he began the practice of reading Scotch commentators 
to his family at evening prayers. The first he took up 
was Hutchinson on Job. 

"And many times after I had begun," he writes, " I 
had this Darted into my mind ; That I might expect some 
Trials (perhaps of Long Sickness) to come shortly upon 
my Family ; and that the Lessons fetch'd from the Study 
of Job were to prepare me for those Trials." 

The rest of his notes until the 25 th of May record 
only such ecstasies, vigils, activities, as by this time 
we know well. On that day his consort miscarried, 
at four or five months. He thought it his duty to 
humble himself before the Lord ; but the dispensation 
remained mysterious, for 

*' when I more particularly examined, whether I had ever 
troubled the Churches of the Lord with any False Con- 
ception^ I could not find myself conscious to any such 
matter." 

For seven months there are few notes in the diary 
which concern anything but his domestic afiairs. 
What few there are indicate that all the while his busy 
work went on unchecked. And besides the " Magna- 
lia," which was published this year, he gave no less 
than eleven books to the press in the course of 1702. 
But what concerns us now is what went on at his 
home. 



PRIVATE LIFE. 193 

His wife grew worse. On the 3d of June, holding a 
special fast for her, he had a " sad experiment. ... I 
can't Beleeve what I will or when I will." A dulness 
was on his spirit ; impure thoughts assailed him ; he 
feared she was about to die. His distress increased 
for three days. Then, on the 6th, 

•• in the Forenoon, while 1 was at prayer with my Dying 
Wife, in her Chamber, ... I began to feel the blessed 
breezes of a particular Faith, blowing from Heaven upon 
my mind. . . . In the Afternoon, when I was alone in my 
Study, crying unto the Lord, . . . my particular Faith \s2i?> 
again Renewed, and with a Flood of Tears, I thought I 
received an assurance from Heaven, That she should Re- 
cover. Whereupon I begg'd of the Lord, That He would 
by His Good Spirit incline me to be exemplarily wise, and 
chast, and Holy, in my whole Conversation, when I should 
again obtain such favour of the Lord, as to have my Good 
Thing with me, in former Circumstances.' 

Next day, for all this, she grew worse ; her physi- 
cian was called out of church to attend her; and 
Mather '' was called up, in the middle of the following 
Night, because they thought her Dying." At one or 
two in the morning he retired to his study, where the 
Lord renewed '' assurances of His purpose to Recover 
her." She lingered on. In a special fast for her on 
the 4th of July, he prayed too for the town, where 
small-pox had broken out; for the land, where war 
had been proclaimed ; ^ and for " other sad circum- 
stances we have in our government."^ On the 12th, 
he held his seventh fast for her : — 

1 " Malbrook s'en va-t-en guerre," etc. 

2 See Chapter X. 

13 



1 94 CO TTON MA THER. 

" On which Day I also made Seven several Addresses for 
her, wherein I resigned her unto tlie Lord, and submitted 
unto all the sorrowful Consequences of a Rejected prayer, 
and a Defeated Failh, and a desolate broken Family, if He 
should order them for me. But while I thus ^ave up my 
dear consort, still I could noX. give her overP 

And his particular faith was renewed. On the 21st, 
as she was still terribly ill, 

" I chose ... to Spread my Distress before the Lord, 
in the way of a Vigil. I Retired into my Bed-Chamber, 
and spent good part of the Night, prostrate on the Floor 
(with so Little of Garment on, as to render my lying there 
painful to my Tender Bones) crying to God for the Life 
of my poor Consort. ... I think, before I went unto my 
Rest, I obtained some further satisfaction that my God has 
heard me." 

On the I St of August, she was a little better : — 

"And yett, after This, . . . her Feebleness grows again 
to that extremity, as to render her condition, as dubious 
perhaps as ever. I am kept up all Night that I may see 
her Dy, and therewith see the Terrible Death of my prayer 
and Faith. But in this Extremity, when I renew my Vis- 
its unto Heaven, ... a strange Irradiation comes from 
Heaven upon my Spirit that her Life shall not as yett come 
unto an End. — My Heavenly Father will still have me 
attended with some special Exercise, that shall keep my 
prayer and Faith employed. And that which His Fatherly 
Wisdome has ordered for me, in these later weeks, has been 
the singular Calamity of my poor Consort : and an Illness 
which none of the ablest physicians know, what to Judge 
of, or what to do for." 

On the 29th, reflecting that his consort had been 
" strangely upheld, and tho' chasten'' d sore, yett not 
given over to Deaths for twice seven weeks together," 



PRIVATE LIFE. 195 

he determined to hold a thanksgiving : it might be, he 
thought, that '' a Day of praise, would be followed with 
salvations, beyond what any Dayes of prayer had yett 
obtained." But though she mended a litde hereupon, 
it was only a little. 

So in September he writes : 

" I suspect, I have been too unattentive unto the meaning 
of the Holy Spirit, and His Angel, in iht partic7tlar Faith, 
which I have had about my Consort's being Restored unto 
me. . . . When she has been Several Times on or near 
the Last Agonies of Death, ... I cry to the Lord, that 
He will yett spare her. He tells me. That He will do it. 
Accordingly, to our Astonishment, . . . she stayes yett 
longer with us. . . . But it may be, after the Lord has 
given me admirable Demonstrations, of His being Lothe to 
Deny me anything that I importunately ask of him, and 
therefore does one Month after another Delay the Thing 
which I fear ; yett I must at Last Encounter the Death 
which I have so deprecated, when both my wife and my- 
self shall be better prepared for it." 

On thQ 2 2d of October, matters still unchanged, he 
held a vigil, at the close of which he writes : — 

" I took my psalm-book into my hand that I might sing 
something for the Quickening of my uneasy Mind. And 
unto my Surprize, the very first Verse, that at the opening of 
the Book, my Eye was carried unto was that : Psal. 105. 37. 

And there was not among the Tribes 
A Feeble.person told. 

Lord, I thought ! — This won't be fulfilled until the Resur- 
rection of the Dead. The Tribes of the Raised will not 
have one /'^^(^/^^^rjf?^ among them. And must I resign 
the condition of my Consort at last unto what shall be done 
in the future state .? Lord, Thy Will be Done-'' 



196 COTTON MATHER. 

The next night his wife had a vision. A grave per- 
son appeared to her, — " she supposes, in her sleep," — 
leading a woman in such " meagre and wretched cir- 
cumstances " that Mrs. Mather was presently stirred to 
praise God that " her condition was not yett so miser- 
ably circumstanced." The grave person proceeded to 
suggest remedies that had not occurred to the doctors ; 
the doctors approved the suggestions ; and Mrs. Mather 
grew better, 

" Insomuch that she came twice on Saturday out of her 
Sick Chamber, unto me in my Study ; and there she asked 
me to give Thanks unto God with her, and for her, on the 
Account of the Recovery in so surprising a Degree begun 
unto her. — After this, my dear Consort continued much 
Refreshed, and yett Feeble. We had Great Hopes of her 
becoming a Strong person again; and yett great Fears, 
Lest some further Latent mischief within her, prove after 
all too hard for her." 

On the 30th of October comes this note : — 

"Yesterday, I first saw my Church History, since the 
publication of it. A Gentleman arrived here from New- 
castle, in England,, that had bought it there. Wherefore, I 
sett apart this Day, for solemn Thanksgiving unto God, 
for His Watchful and gracious providence over that Work 
and for the Harvest of so many prayers, and cares, and 
Tears, and Resignations, as I had employ'd upon it. My 
Religious Friend, Mr. Bi'oomfield, who had been singularly 
helpful to me in the publication of that great Book (of 
Twenty shillings price, at London') came to me, at the 
Close of the Day, to join with me, in some of my praises 
to God. — On this Day my little daughter Nibby began to 
fall sick of the small-pox. The dreadful Disease, which is 
raging in the Neighbourhood, is now gott into my Family. 
God prepare me, God prepare me, for what is coming upon 



PRIVATE LIFE. 197 

me. The child is favourably visited, in comparison of 
what many are." 

The pestilence increased through November. So did 
the fervency of Cotton Mather's prayers. Late in the 
month, he writes : — 

"Humiliations are coming thick upon me! My Study, 
is tho' a Large, yett a Warm Chamber, (the hangings 
whereof, are Boxes with between two and three thousand 
Books in them,) and we are so circumstanced, that my 
House, tho' none of the smallest, cannot afford a safe Hos- 
pital now for my Sick Folks, anywhere so well as there. 
So I Resigned my Study, for an Hospital 10 my little 
Folks, that are falling sick of a Loathsome Disease." 

The first patient there was his "godly maid"; 
Nancy came down on the 24th ; little Increase on 
the 29th. 

"The Little Creatures," he writes, "keep calling for me 
so often to pray with them that I can scarce do it less than 
ten or a dozen times in a day ; besides what I do with my 
Neighbours." 

Two days later, 

" At last, the Black Day arrives. ... I had never yett 
seen such a Black Day, in all the Time of my Pilgrimage. 
The Desire of my Eyes is this Day to be taken from me. 
. . . All the Forenoon, . . . she lies in the pangs of 
Death ; sensible until the last minute or two before her 
final expiration. I Cannot Remember the Discourses that 
passed between us. Only, her Devout Soul was full of 
Satisfaction, about her going to a State of Blessedness, 
with the Lord Jesus Christ, and as far as my Distress 
would permitt me, I studied how to confirm her satisfaction 
and consolation. This I Remember, That a little while 
before she died, I asked her to tell me Faithfully, what 



198 COTTON MATHER. 

Fault she had seen in my Conversation, that she would 
advise me to rectify. She replied, (which I wondred at,) 
That she knew of none, but that God had made what she 
had observed in my Conversation, exceedingly serviceable 
unto her, to bring her much nearer to Himself. When 
I saw to what a point of Resignation I was now called of 
the Lord, I Resolved, with His Help therein to glorify 
Him. So, Two Hours before my Lovely Consort Expired, 
I kneeled by her Bed-Side, and I took into my two Hands, 
a dear Hand, the dearest in the World. With her thus in 
my Hands, I solemnly and sincerely gave her up unto the 
Lord: and in token of my Real Resignation, I gently 
putt her out of my Hands, and Laid away a most Lovely 
Hand, Resolving That I would never touch it any more. 
This was the Hardest, and perhaps, the bravest Action, 
that ever I did. She afterwards told me, That she sign'd 
and seaVd 77iy Act of Resigiiation. And tho' before that, 
she call'd for me, continually, she after this never asked 
for me any more. She continued until near two a clock in 
the Afternoon, And the last Sensible Word that she Spoke, 
was to her weeping Father, Heaven, Heaven, will make 
amends for all. When she was expired, I immediately 
prayed with her Father, and the other weeping people in 
the chamber, for the grace to carry it well under the pres- 
ent Calamity, and I did Consummate my Resignation, in 
terms as full of glory to the wisdome and Goodness and 
Alsufficiency of the Lord, as I could utter. She Lived 
with me just as many years, as she had Lived in the World, 
before she came to me, with an Addition of the seven 
months, wherein her Dying Languishments were preparing 
me to part with her." 



X. 

Cotton Mather's Private Life. — His Second 

Marriage. — Charter of Harvard College. 

— Quarrel with Joseph Dudley. 

1702-1707. 

Before proceeding with Cotton Mather's private hfe, 
we may best glance at the history of Massachusetts and 
of Harvard College for the next five years ; and first, 
perhaps, glance back at Cotton Mather's account of his 
first interview with Governor Dudley. 

On the last page of his diary for 1702 is this memo- 
randum : — 

"June 16. I received a Visit from Governour jC>//(^/^/. 
Among other things ... I said to him, . . . ' Syr, you 
arrive to the Government of a people, that have their 
various and their Divided Apprehensions, . . . particularly 
about your own Government over them. I am humbly of 
opinion. That it will be your Wisdom to carry an Indiffer- 
ent Hand towards all parties. ... I would approve it . . . 
if any one should say to Your Excellency : By 110 means 
lett any people have cause to say. That you take all your 
measures fro7n the Two Mr. Mathers. By the same Rule, 
I may say without offence : By no meatis lett any people 
say, That you go by no 7neasures in your coJiduct but Mr. 
Byfield's and Mr. Leverett's. This 1 speak not from any 
personal prejudice against the Gentlemen, but from a due 
consideration of the Disposidon of the people ; and as 
a service to your Excellency.' The Wretch went unto 



200 COTTON MATHER. 

those men, and told them, that I had advised him to be no 
ways advised by them : and inflamed them into an im- 
placable Rage against me." 

For some years Mather maintained friendly relations 
with the "wretch" in question; but they were strain- 
ing more and more. The verdict of posterity is that 
from beginning to end Joseph Dudley was a self-seeker. 
Such verdicts, of course, are to be taken with caution ; 
and in estimating this one it is but fair to remember 
that Dudley was the first of the native Tories, and that 
New England tradition has never done the native Loyal- 
ists justice. At the same time, I have found little to 
show that in this particular case posterity has erred. 
At home and abroad Dudley's whole training had been 
that of a gentleman, — an aristocrat. In his eleven 
years of exile he had been in constant contact with in- 
triguing, self-seeking courtiers. How foreign his tem- 
per was to that of the compatriots he came to govern 
appears most vividly in a misadventure which befell 
him in December, 1705.^ 

" Dec. 7," writes Sevvall, "Went to Brooklin. . . . After 
DiiTer met the Govr. upon the Plain; . . . told me of what 
hapened on the road, being in a great passion : threaten'd 
to send those that affronted him to England." 

What had happened on the road was this. Driving 
in his travelling chariot, Governor Dudley found his way 
stopped by two carts loaded with wood. He ordered 
the carters to move aside. They declined, one of them 
saying, " I am as good flesh and blood as you ; . . • 

1 See Sevvall's Diary, II. 144, seq., and note. Meantime Sewall's 
son had married Dudley's daughter. 



JOSEPH DUDLEY. 20i 

you may goe out of the way." The Governor drew 
his sword on the man, who snatched it and broke it, 
declaring that he acted in defence of his hfe. '' You 
lie, you dog; you lie, you devill ! " cried Dudley. — 
"Such words don't become a Christian," said the 
carter. — "A Christian, you dog ! " cried Dudley. " A 
Christian, you devill ! I was a Christian before you 
were born." And snatching the carter's whip he 
lashed him. Then he had both carters arrested, 
and apparently tried to make their conduct appear 
treasonable. The case hung on until the following 
November, when the Superior Court discharged the 
prisoners. This was the Governor that the Mathers 
had fondly hoped to manage. 

The temper Dudley thus showed in private appears, 
more decorously, in his public conduct. Palfrey^ tells 
in detail the story of his relations with the legislature, 
and of the wars which harassed the frontiers. It was 
during these wars that Deerfield was sacked, Cotton 
Mather's cousin Mrs. Williams killed, and her husband 
and family carried off by French and Indians. And 
before 1707, the people of Massachusetts had generally 
come to believe that Dudley's administration was cor- 
rupt ; and that he was personally interested in illicit 
trade with the enemy. 

Harvard College meanwhile proceeded under the pro- 
visional government of Vice-President VVillard. From 
the time of President Mather's dismissal Cotton Mather 
never attended a meeting of the Corporation. On the 
loth of August, 1703, he was reckoned to have abdi- 
cated ; and Mr. Brattle elected in his place.^ As a 
» Book IV. Chapters VIII.-X. ■'- Quincy, I. 151. 



202 COTTON MATHER. 

minister of Boston, he remained an Overseer ; but 
apparently attended only one other meeting of the 
board. VVillard and Dudley had married sisters, — a 
fact which might well have had influence on such a 
temper as the Governor's. Whatever the reason, no 
steps were taken for a new charter during Willard's 
administration beyond two mentions of the subject in 
the Governor's messages : one in 1 703, the other in 
1705.^ 

So we come back to Cotton Mather's diary. It was 
on Tuesday, December i, 1702, that his wife died. 
On Saturday she had been buried ; and we find him 
holding a day of prayer and fasting, 
" That I may obtain the pardon of all the sins for which 
the Lord is now chastening me ; and Grace and Help from 
Heaven to glorify the Lord with a wise Behaviour, under 
the Temptations of the Condition which is now come 
upon me." 

Next day he preached on the death of the prophet 
Ezekiel's wife ; and he notes that in many ways the 
people showed their love to him, — among other tokens 
of affection subscribing to build Mrs. Mather a costly 
tomb. A little later, the pestilence began to abate ; 
the children grew better, and escaped scarlet fever, 
which was also abroad. Cotton Mather himself re- 
mained well. His godly maid recovered, too ; but 
so " distracted " that she had to go. 

His next note is very long and curious. The seven 
months' strain has brought reaction. With a good deal 
of deliberation, he proceeds to consider the " Dispensa- 
tions of Heaven, that have been Rolling over" him. 
1 Quincy, Vol. 1. Chapter VIII 



H/S SECOND MARRIAGE. 203 

" Has not the Death of my Consort,"' he asks, " that most 
astonishing- Sting in it : A iniscarriageofa particidar Faith ? 
Truly, Nothing has ever yet befallen me, that has come so 
near it. But "— he finds reassuring thoughts. In the first 
place, it was compassionate in God to remove her : she 
could never have grown strong enough to perform her 
conjugal and maternal duties. " More than all this. She 
was a Gentlewoman of a Melancholy Temperament : and 
there were come dreadful changes in her Father's Family. 
He had extremely broken her Spirit by bringing home a 
mother-in-law. . . . Her youngest Brother, and a consider- 
able Interest of mine with him. (some hundreds of pounds 
perhaps) was newly fallen into the Hands of the French 
Enemy. Her Second Brother, who was her Darling, . . . 
was dead in London. . . . Her Eldest Brother proves an 
Idle, profane. Drunken, and sottish Fellow, and a Disgrace 
to all his Relatives. . . . The sight of these Things, would 
without a miracle, have brought such a Disorder of Mind 
upon her, as would have rendered my Condition Insup- 
portable. And now, who can tell, what way may be made 
for Blessings unto me, and mine, by her Translation to the 
Heavenly World.'' " In the second place, she herself had 
prayed that she might never live to hear of the death of her 
favorite brother ; and this prayer was granted. In the third 
place, within a fortnight after her death he had preached on 
John 4. 47,^ from which he had expounded the doctrine that 
'• Tho' Faith be no Folly, yett Faith may be mixed with 
Folly ; and particularly with the Folly of Limiting the Wis- 
dome of God, unto our own way of answerino^ it.'' And a 
gentlewoman, who heard the sermon, had been so moved 
as to address him thereupon in verses, ending — 

" Your whole Discourse is Swol'n with its own praise, 
But this fair Article, does wear the Baies." 

^ " When he heard that Jesus was come out of Judea into Gali- 
lee, he went unto him, and besought him that he would come 
down, and heal his son : for he was at the point of death." 



2 04 COTTON MATHER 

" It may be," he writes at last, "The Lord will ere long 
Enable me, to penetrate further into the Nature, meaning;, 
and mystery of 2i particular Faith. However, I have mett 
with enough to awaken in me a more exquisite Caution, 
than ever I had in my Life, concerning it." 

In January, Nancy was very ill : but when her life was 
despaired of, his prayers recovered her. The only other 
note I have recorded for this month runs thus : — 

" Before the late Weeks of my Life, I had rarely known 
Tears, except those that were for the Joy of the Salvation 
of God. But now, scarce a day passes me without a Flood 
of Tears, and my Eyes even Decay with weeping. One 
Day, considering how frequently and foolishly widowers 
miscarry, and by their miscarriages dishonour God, I ear- 
nestly with Tears besought the Lord, That he would please 
to favour me, so far as to kill me rather than to leave me 
unto anything that might bring any Remarkable Dishonour 
unto His Holy Name. (Within a few Minutes, I found 
myself grow very 111. ... I suspected that the Lord was 
going to take me at my word. But anon, 1 perceived that 
it was nothing but Vapours ^'^ 

The next month began a new trial. He received a 
visit from a very attractive young gentlewoman, who de- 
clared that she had long admired his public character, 
and now felt herself at liberty to confess herself equally 
pleased with his person. The state of perplexity into 
which this address threw him lasted for two months. 

His diary for 1 703 ^ begins with a birthday fast on 
this occasion. His note of it is typical of all on the 
subject. 

" Nature itself," he writes, " causes in me a mighty 
Tenderness for a person so very amiable Breeding re- 

1 In possession of the American Antiquarian Society. 



HIS SECOND MARRIAGE. 205 

quires me to treat her with Honour and Respect, and very 
much of Deference to all that she shall at any time ask of 
me. But Religion, above all, obliges me instead of a rash 
Rejecting her Conversation, to Contrive rather how I may 
Imitate the Goodness of the Lord Jesus Christ in his deal- 
ing with such as are upon a Conversion unto him. — On the 
other side I cannot but fear a fearful Snare, and that I may 
soon fall into some error in my Conversation, if the point 
proposed unto me be found after all unattainable thro' the 
violent Storm of Opposition which I cannot but foresee 
. . . will be made unto it." 

So on the i8th of February he begged her to desist ; 
and, finding her inflexible, devoted himself to the task 
of converting her. And on the 20th he held a vigil, 
partly for himself, whom he feared "■ rejected and ab- 
horred of God," — relatives and friends being dis- 
pleased with gossip about the gentlewoman, — but 
partly for his church. 

" It was a consolation unto me," he writes, "to think 
That when my people were all asleep in their Beds their 
poor pastor should be watching and praying and weeping 
for them." 

On the 27th, he held another fast, in which he gave 
up to the Lord '* the Ingenious Child that sollicits my 
Respects unto her." On the 6th of March he was in 
great trouble ; the gentlewoman's reputation turned 
out to be somewhat damaged ; to marry her would 
seriously interfere with his ministry ; and her attentions 
were beginning to cause much tattle. 

On the I 2th, his state of mind was confused: the 
Assembly had voted 

" the most unworthy man in the world to be Praesident of 
the Colledge in Cambridge. God knows what further trials 



2o6 COTTON MATHER. 

are comins; upon me." But at the same time, " the Spirit 
of the Lord sometimes does Visit me with Raptures of 
Assurances, That He has loved me, and that I shall glorify 
Him. I am sometimes even ready to faint away with the 
Rapturous praelibations of the Heavenly World.'' 

On the 15th, he definitely renounced the gentle- 
woman. " I struck the Knife into the Heart of my 
Sacrifice by a Letter to her Mother." But next day 
comes this : — 

" Was ever man more Tempted than the miserable 
Mather ? Should I tell in how many Forms the Devil has 
assaulted me, ... it would strike my Friends with Hor- 
rour. Sometimes Temptations to Impurities: and some- 
times to Blasphemy and Atheism and the Abandonment of 
all Religion as a mere Delusion : and sometimes to Self- 
Destruction itself. These, even These, O miserable Math- 
er, do follow thee with an astonishing Fury. But I fall 
down into the Dust on my Study-floor, with Tears before 
the Lord : and then, they quickly vanish : Tis fair weather 
again. Lord, what wilt thou do with me t '' 

On the 3d of April he held another fast, to guard 
against the temptations of widowhood. He would like 
to remain a widower, he thought ; but his father and his 
friends advised otherwise. On the 13th, 14th, and 15th, 
he kept three successive days of fastmg and prayer, in 
which extraordinary things were done for him. 

"The Angels of Heaven are at work for me," he writes, 
" And I have my oiuu An^ei, who is a better Friend unto 
me, than any I have upon Earth." 

But the " desirable frame " in which this left him 
lasted only two days. Still, on the i8th of May he 
found himself assured that 

"for the sake of the Lord [esus Christ, whose I am, a 
desireable consort should be bestowed upon me : and a 



HIS SECOND MARRIAGE. 207 

glorious Angel of the Lord, should be concerned for me 
(as for Isaac of old) in this important matter." 

His friends, it appears, were trying to make a match 
for him ; but succeeded only in getting him distress- 
ingly talked about. A '* marvellous providence of 
God " diverted him from "doing a thing- whereto . . . 
Friends had mightily urged " him. On the 19th, he 
went to Salem for five days. The gentlewoman and 
her mother took advantage of his absence to call on 
Increase Mather, who had been suffering with gout ; 
and to urge their case. But Cotton Mather, though dis- 
tressed, remained resolute. And a little later he writes, 

"While the Lord is otherwise laying me exceedingly 
low, He yett gratifies me with Strange Favours on that 
point which is the very Apple ot my Eye: and that is, my 
being employed in Service for His Blessed Name." 

In other words, his condition had proved unusually 
favourable to pulpit eloquence. 

In June, when gossip began to accuse him of jilting 
the gentlewoman, she joined her mother in loyally 
protesting that his conduct had been thoroughly hon- 
ourable. 

" Yea," he writes, " they have proceeded so far beyond all 
bounds in my vindication, as to say, They verily look on Mr. 
M r to be as great a Saint of God as any upon earth.'' 

The poor gentlewoman had a worse trial coming, 
though. Sundry fasts of Cotton Mather's early in July 
directed his attention to Mrs. Elizabeth Hubbard, a 
godly and comely widow who lived near by. On the 
14th, he paid her his first visit. In a few days more 
they were engaged. The gentlewoman raged, but re- 
lented. People in general approved. And Cotton 



2o8 COTTON MATHER. 

Mather's troubles reduced themselves to groundless 
fears that he should die before his wedding day. On 
the 1 8th of August, after spending the day in Heaven, 
he became in the evening the husband of " the most 
agreeable Consort (all things considered) that all 
America could have afforded me." 

Of this lady her son Samuel wrote : — 

" She was one, of finished Piety and Probity, and of an 
unspotted Reputation ; one of good sense, and bless'd with 
a compleat Discretion in ordering an Household ; one of 
singular good-Humour and incomparable Sweetness ot 
Temper; one, with a very handsome and engaging Coun- 
tenance; and one honourably descended and related; . . . 
the Daughter of Dr. John Clark. She had been a 
Widow four years when Dr.^ Mather married her."^ 

The rest of Cotton Mather's notes for this year show 
him very busy with pastoral and literary work, and quite 
relieved of the morbid tension that preceded his mar- 
riage. 

My summary of his annual literary work in the last 
chapter should be sufficient. A glance at Sibley's cata- 
logue of his works ^ will show that the years I have 
summarized are typical. Of this matter I shall say no 
more, save that his publications in 1703 amounted to 
twelve ; and in i 704 to the same number. And so he 
kept on all his life. 

His diary for i 704 is not preserved. The only facts 
I have noted for this year are these. A daughter, 
Elizabeth, was born to him. It was the year when 

^ The title is premature. Cotton Mather \vas not Doctor of 
Divinity until 17 10. 
^ Life, page 13. 
8 Harvard Graduates, III. 42-1555 



HIS SECOND MARRIAGE 209 

Deerfield was sacked. In June, certain pirates were 
hanged in Boston ; and Cotton Mather preached to 
them and went with them to execution, where, '' when 
the scaffold was let to sink," Sewall writes, " there was 
such a Screech of the Women that my wife heard it 
sitting in our Entry, . . . yet the wind was sou- west. 
Our house is a full mile from the place." In July, 
Sewall notes that Cotton Mather was at Commence- 
ment; on October 12 th, that Cotton Mather prayed 
for the College. Two days before, Samuel Mather^ 
tells us, a dying man had sent for Cotton Mather, to 
beg his forgiveness for wanton slanders. Mather for- 
gave him : and " the Man . . . kept continually cry- 
ing for him to be with him the next Day in the 
Forenoon, and he died in the Afternoon." I incline, 
also, to attribute to the period of his troubles with the 
gentlewoman of 1703 the anecdote preserved in a 
vituperative pamphlet of 1707, and probably a good 
example of the stories told of him by his enemies. It 
runs thus : — 

" A Gentlewoman of Gayety, near Boston^ was frequently 
visited by the Reverend Mr. C. M. which giving offence 
to some of his Audience, he promised to avoid her Conver- 
sation But Good intentions being frustrated by Vicious 
Inclinations, he becomes again her humble Servant : the 
Reciprocal promise being first made, that Neither of 

THEM SHOULD CONFESS THEIR SEEING EACH OTHER : 

However it becoming again publick, his Father accused him 
of it, who after two or three Hems to recover himself, gave 
this Aequivocal Answer, Indeed, Father, if I should 

SAY I DID SEE HER, I SHOULD TELL A GREAT LYE." ''' 

1 Life, page 64. 

2 Sewall's Diary, II. 81*. See page 222. 

14 



210 COTTON MAIMER. 

Which story, having read his diaries, I do not 
believe. 

The diary for 1705^ records a busy year, more whole- 
some than usual. I have noted a few entries. On the 
1 6th of March, maligned for falsehood, he held a very 
earnest day of fasting and prayer. 

"And I considered," he writes, "That tho' my whole 
Time all the Day long, and all the Week long, is employed 
in a continual Contrivance of . . . Zeal to do good, yett 
few men meet with more clogs in it, from the malignity of 
Evil people, . . . And if I had jogg'd on in an Indifferent 
manner as others do, and less thwarted and vexed the 
Divel in his interests, I might have been as little envied 
and maligned as they: But I resolved. That I would not 
at all Abate of my Endeavors to be universally Service- 
able." 

In May, Nancy had another severe illness. 

" I cannot be at rest," he writes, " until I have obtained 
of the Lord that this Child shall in Spiritual Blessings 
have an abundant and glorious Compensation for all her 
Temporal Sufferings." 

In May he was specially maligned by a '' very wicked 
fellow," who, with Cotton Mather's approval, had been 
disciplined by the Church of Woburn. Early in June, 
then, he examined himself for 

" what marks I can find in myself, that might carry me 
cheerfully thro' the Dark Valley of the Shadow of Death, 
if I should be (which I have abundance of Reason to look 
for) immediately called into it." He found eleven, of which 
the last was compassion for personal enemies. " I am 
afraid," he writes, "of allowing my Soul a Wish of Evil to 
the Worst of them All. . • . Q. Whether the man that can 

1 In possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society 



HIS SECOND MARRIAGE. 2ii 

find these marks upon himself may not conclude himself 
inark'd otit for the City of God ? " 

At this time he was very busy, starting Societies for 
t?he Suppression of Disorders. 

'' I am well content," he writes, " that I have not the 
Time, to Record a hundredth part of the 7)iethods to bring 
forth Fruit wherein I am endeavoring \o glorify God, so that 
they should be utterly buried in oblivion for this world." 

In July, hearing in a hymn the words, 

"With persons merciful that be 
Thou merciful thyself wilt show," 

he was affected to tears by the thought that the merci- 
ful dispositions he could discover in himself were but 
faint rays of the sun of God's mercy. In November, 
he examined himself curiously. 

" A man Bitten with a Mad-Dog,''' he writes, " has not 
only his Body, but his very Soul also poisoned. The poi- 
son . . . pervades the Nervous Fluid. . . . The Spirit of 
such a man, will cause him to say to his Friend, . . . / 
would not hurt you. Notwithstanding this, yett when his 
Fitt arrives the Spirit must knock under and ly fettered. 
. . . The Soul of every man is Dog-Bitten, or, which is as 
bad, serpent-bitten, or Divel-bitten. Original Sin has de- 
praved it. ... A Regenerate Spirit . . . chuses above all 
Things, to Glorify God, . . . and it has gotten an Empire 
over the Soul, in doing of it." 

By this test, he found himself probably regenerate. 
In January, there was a thanksgiving for successes in 
the war with France. 

" For the best part of Two Hours together," he writes, 
"my soul kept soaring and Flaming towards Heaven in the 
wondrous praises of God. Such length in this kind of De- 



212 COTTON MATHER 

votions being somewhat unusual, and unto some folks (I 
fear'd) uneasy, I took occasion in my Sermon to make this 
Apology for it." 

The apology I will not quote ; it is very long. 

The volume closes with five elaborate notes : one 
about the dispositions of his mind relating to a great 
reputation in the world, concerning which he believes 
himself to care little ; one about the education of his 
children, which is substantially what his son Samuel 
reports of his practices ; ^ one about several points of 
conduct, in which he resolves to practise Christian hu- 
mility ; and one about his flock, which he purposes to 
edify by pastoral visits, and by edifying speeches on 
all occasions, — giving them many books, too, with the 
charge that they are to remember that he speaks to 
them whenever the books are before them. The fifth 
note is similar to that which closes nearly every volume 
of the diary, — a memorandum of the texts he has 
preached from this year : it covers four closely written 
pages. 

The diary for 1706^ opens with a very long memo- 
randum of how his time is occupied : this is digested 
under thirty-one heads. It appears that he rises at 
seven or eight ; ^ sings a hymn of praise ; writes a short 
paragraph, — " hereby sometimes I have insensibly 
prepared whole sermons " ; adds illustrations to the 
'* Biblia Americana " ; prays in private and then with 
his family ; works ; dines, edifying the family mean- 

1 See page 165. 

■^ In possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society 
3 Thus habitually sleeping eight or nine hours, which is prob- 
ably what kept him alive. 



HIS SECOND MARRIAGE. 213 

while ; retires to his study for a short prayer ; goes 
out visiting ; about the shutting in of the evening hears 
the children say the catechism, and makes an evening 
prayer chiefly of thanksgiving ; sups at ten, edifying the 
adult part of his family ; prays and reflects on the day 
in his study ; and reads himself to sleep with some agree- 
able book at eleven or so. Sermons, the children, the 
sick, calls from all manner of visitors, the fourteen or 
fifteen religious societies he belongs to, new books to 
be read, frequent days of fasting and prayer, and the 
discipline of his church constantly engage his attention. 
He notes all this in the hope that by perusing it he may 
be kept up to work. Four pages of notes of his cor- 
respondents follow : I observe no names of permanent 
importance. 

His birthday note is worth remembering. He would 
Hke to record thoughts 

"that carry in them a peculiar Advancement of my Soul to- 
wards the perfection after which I am aspiring. One of 
them, which has been of late singularly useful to me in my 
pressing after the true temper of Christianity is This. I see 
all Creatures everywhere full of their Delights. The Birds 
are singing; the Fish are sporting; the Four-footed are 
glad of what they meet withal ; the very Insects have th'eir 
satisfactions. Tis a marvellous Display of Infinite Good- 
ness. The Good God has made His Creatures capable of 
Delights : He accommodates them with continual Delights. 
These Delights are the Delicious Entertainments of His 
Infinite Goodness. His Goodness takes pleasure in . . . 
the Delights of His Creatures. — Well: Is there no way 
for me to Resemble and Imitate this Incomparable Good- 
ness of God ? Yes : I see my Neighbours all accommo- 
dated with their various Delights. All have some, and 
some have many. Now I may honestly make their Delights 



214 COTTON MATHER. 

my own. ... I may make their prosperity, not my Envy^ 
but my pleasure. . . . Oh, the glorious Joy of this Good- 
ness ! Lord, Imprint this thy Image upon me ! " 

With good resolutions, one against evil-speaking, 
for example ; with prayers and assurances, among 
others for the prisoners among the French and In- 
dians, the year went on. In March, little Increase 
having begun school. Cotton Mather wrote a verse 
daily for the child to get by heart, that he might " im- 
prove in goodness at the same time that he improv'd 
in Reading " : these verses ultimately made a popular 
book. In April, he was pleased to find that he had 
" no Fondness at all for Applause and Honour in this 
World " : for which disposition '' in the midst of . . . 
Humiliations," he gave thanks. Late in May, lan- 
guishing in health, he hurried work and finished the 
first draft of the " Biblia Americana." He kept add- 
ing to it, however, for years. As late as 1720 he 
wrote John Winthrop ^ that he had inserted in the 
" Bibha Americana" an account of the discovery in 
New England of a water-dove, probably the species 
employed by Noah. The manuscript of the " Biblia 
x\mericana," by far the most voluminous of Cotton 
Mather's works, is preserved by the Massachusetts His- 
torical Society. He could never find subscribers enough 
to publish it; and I have not had the time or the 
courage to examine it. At a superficial glance, it seems 
to be a marvellously industrious, uncritical collection of 
every scrap of learning he could find which might by 
any chance have bearing on Holy Writ. It includes a 
great deal of such matter as is most fiimiliarly known 
1 Mather Papers, 436. 



HIS SECOND MARRIAGE. 215 

nowadays in Burton's " Anatomy of Melancholy " ; 
and a great deal, too, of that eager observation of na- 
ture ^ which some years later made Cotton Mather a 
Fellow of the Royal Society. 

His next work, printed in June, was an essay to pro- 
mote the Christianizing of Negroes.^ He determined 
to give a copy of this to every family in New Eng- 
land who possessed a Negro, and to send copies to the 
West Indies. 

In July, he was much disturbed about illicit trade 
with hostile Indians. These Indians made a descent 
this very month on the Andover road, over which he 
.had passed a few days before. On this journey, he 
writes, 

" being desirous to do some Good on the Road in the 
Woods, I called some children to me, which I met there, 
and bestowed some Instructions with a little Bonk upon 
them: which I understood afterwards made no little Im- 
pression upon the Family. But it proved a family which 
in a few Dayes the Indians visited, and murdered the 
mother, and several of the children." 

So the year went on, busier than ever. In October 
I find two notes worth recording. On the 17th, he 
writes : — 

" One of my more special Actions . . . was to make my 
Children, Four of them,^ successively to come into my 

1 For examples of this, see Cotton Mather's letters to John 
Winthrop, in the Mather Papers. 

2 See Sibley, III. 93 ; and in regard to Cotton Mather's rela- 
tions to negroes in general, see a paper by Professor Haynes 
in the Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society. 

^ Katharine, Abigail, Hannah, and Increase ; their ages 
ranged from fourteen to seven. 



2i6 COTTON MATHER. 

Study, and observe and mention to me the special mercies 
which they were sensible they had received of God ; and 
then charge them immediately to Retire and give Thanks 
unto the Lord, and beg to be possessed by the Spirit of the 
Lord." 

On Wednesday, the 30th, he writes : — 

" With many favourable Circumstances for which the 
Lord had been sought unto, my Consort fell into Travail: 
and after a Wondrous Good and Quick Time, was about 
three-quarters of an hour past nine at Night, happily de- 
livered of a Son; to appearance a hearty and an handsome 
Infant. — On the Lord's-day following I Baptized this my 
Son, and called him Samuel. Tis my desire to have him 
devoted unto the Service of the Lord as long as he hves." 

That night, accordingly, he held a vigil for his whole 
family. This Samuel lived to grow up into a very 
commonplace divine, whose biography of his father 
is probably the most colourless book in the English 
language. 

In November, Cotton Mather's assurances were re- 
warded by the return of his cousin, Mr. Williams of 
Deerfield, from captivity. In December some gentle- 
men gave Mather a negro, named Onesimus, worth forty 
or fifty pounds. 

" I would use the best endeavours," he writes, " to make 
him a servant of Christ, and also be more serviceable than 
ever to a flock which laies me under such obhgations." 

The same month comes a note that shows his temper 
up. He has two wicked brothers-in-law, he writes : — 

" The first of these prodigies, namely J. O.,^ married my 
Lovelv Sister Hannah, a most Ingenious and sweet-Natured, 



John Oliver. 



A 



HIS SECOND MARRIAGE. 21 7 

and good-carriaged Child : one that would have been a Wife, 
to have made any Gentleman Happy ; but married unto a 
Raving Bruit. The Fellow, whom they called, Her Hus- 
band, perfectly murdered her, by his base and abusive way 
of treating her; and he chose to employ in a special man- 
ner, the ebullitions of his venome against me, to weary and 
worry her, out of her Life, who Loved me dearly. ... At 
last on id. lom., . . . the pangs of Death came upon her. 
Her Death was Long and Hard, and has awakened me 
more than ever, to pray for an Easy Death. She kept in 
her dying Distresses much calling on me : her Brother, her 
Brother ! As I had heretofore used all possible Diligence 
and Contrivance, to prepare her for her Death, so I now as- 
sisted her, as well as I could, in her last Hours. I prayed 
with her Six Times this Day : and in the Night following 
she died. The Monster, to whom she owes her Death, 
now with Anguish, bears a most honourable Testimony for 
her ; as the best Wife in the World ; and a great example 
of piety. And from a convinced conscience, he now also 
speaks of me, with no little pretence of Honour and Ac- 
knowledgement. Indeed, she had Cause to Bless God for 
the Wretch, for he was a great occasion of her growing a 
serious and gracious Christian, weaned from this World 
and fitted for a better." 

The other wicked brother-in-law was a Phillips, 
whose offences seem less a matter of opinion. On the 
loth of January, Cotton Mather writes :• — 

" My Father-in- Law at Charlestown has of late been in a 
very froward and Evil Frame. The elder of his Two 
wicked Sons, has been lately Fined by the General Assem- 
bly of the Province for his unlawful Trade with the Enemy. 
The crime of the Traders, whereof he was one filled the 
Countrey with a mighty Inflammation. On that occasion, 
it was necessary for me, to bear my part with the other 
ministers, in a faithful Testimony. And I did my part as 



2 1 8 CO TTON MA THER. 

easily and as modestly, tho' as faithfully as I could. The 
Humoursome Old Man is so very unhappy, as to be en- 
raged at me, and express himself, as I hear, very En- 
ragedly and Abusively. . . . His Two Wicked Sons do 
also strangely manage him." 

So Cotton Mather was afraid that old Mr. Phillips 
would disinherit his Mather grandchildren and offered 
up prayers accordingly. 

The very next note, however, is of different tenor : — 

" My little Son waits upon his Grandfather every day, for 
his Instruction, as well as upon other Tutors and Teach- 
ers. This day I sent him on an Errand, where the person 
imposing on his Flexible Temper, detained him so long 
that his Grandfather was displeased at him, for coming so 
late ; and his punishment was, that his Grandfather, did 
Refuse to Instruct him, as he uses to do. The child, una- 
ble to bear so heavy a punishment, as that his Grandfather 
should not look favourably upon him, repairs to me, full of 
weeping Affliction. Hereupon, I appHed myself with a 
Note, unto my Father^ as an Advocate for the Child. I 
pleaded all that could be said by way of Apology for the 
Infirmity of the Child. I asked, that I might bear the dis- 
pleasure due for it, because of what had passed relating to 
it. I assured my Father, the child should no more in this 
way displease him. So the Child was presently received 
into favour with my Father: My Father looked on him 
with a pleased Aspect, and bestowed agreeable Illumina- 
tion upon him. I thought, the Lord ordered this httle 
Accident this Day, to raise in my mind, the Thoughts of 
the Reconciliation, which the Son of God, who is my Advo- 
cate with the Father, would obtain for me, with God." 

The diary closes with a painful record of how Cotton 
Mather was persistently vexed with vile thoughts : but 
he fought them hard, he resolved that they should not 



J 



JOSEPH DUDLEY. 219 

tempt him to forbear testimony against sin in others, 
and he meditated 

"on the inexpressible evil, which there would be, ... if 
one of my . . . many and mighty obligations, to the most 
unspotted Sanctity, should harbour or indulge in myself 
any wicked Thing in the World." 

Of the diary for 1707 only a fragment remains ; 1 in 
which I have remarked nothing of more note than that 
Cotton Mather was praying fervently for the expedi- 
tion against Port Royal that came to nothing. For the 
notable events of this year, then, we must turn to other 
authorities. 

Palfrey tells with great clearness the story of Joseph 
Dudley's administration. ^ Frequent notes of Sewall's, 
a member of the Council, a judge of the highest court 
in the Province, and closely connected by marriage 
with the Governor, become very vivid when we keep 
in mind the state of politics. In brief, with his over- 
bearing temper, so thoroughly foreign to the temper 
of New England, Dudley had been doing his best to 
strengthen the power of the Crown. Without much 
success, he had been carrying on the war against Can- 
ada; in 1707 a fruitless expedition was sent against 
Port Royal, restored to the French by the Peace of 
1697. Meantime, like other men in office before and 
since, he had taken good care of his personal friends ; 
and was suspected of connivance with some of them in 
illicit trade with the enemy. As Cotton Mather wrote 
in 1 706, a number of illicit traders, among whom was 

1 In possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 

2 Book IV. Chapters VIII. to X. 



2 20 COTTON MATHER. 

John Phillips, brother of the first Mrs. Mather, had 
been condemned by the General Court to pay heavy 
fines for their offence. It is certain that Dudley wrote 
to England in their behalf; and that the Privy Council 
ultimately ordered the fines to be repaid, on the ground 
that the General Court of Massachusetts had no cog- 
nizance of the offence. Before this decision, certain 
men of New England, mostly resident in London, 
had addressed to the Queen a formal petition for 
the removal of Dudley, for corruption, injustice, and 
oppression. 

Harvard College,^ meanwhile, had been proceeding 
under the charge of Vice President Willard, who had 
retained meantime his charge of the Old South Church, 
and seems to have given little more attention to aca- 
demic duties than Increase Mather had given. Appar- 
ently, however, he was much less vigorously conservative 
in temper ; and so far as records show made no par- 
ticular efforts to secure a new charter. As we have 
seen, Dudley twice suggested that application be made 
for one to the Crown. But no notice was taken of 
these suggestions : the friends of the College, Quincy 
thinks, were convinced that no satisfactory charter 
could be secured from any more foreign source than 
their own elected Provincial legislature. 

Willard's health was now failing. He managed to 
preside at Commencement, but gave the degrees so 
feebly that Sewall, who was not far off, could not hear 
a word he said. In the middle of August he went to 
Cambridge for the last time, where he found so few 
scholars that he returned home before prayer-time. 

1 Quincy, Vol. I. Chapter VIII. 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 221 

And on the 12th of September, a friend informed 
Sevvall that the President was very sick. 

"I hoped it might go off," writes Sewall, "and went to 
Diiier ; when I came there Mr. Pemberton^ was at Prayer, 
near concluding, a pretty many in the Chamber. After 
Prayer, many went out, I staid and sat down : and in a few 
minutes saw my dear Pastor Expire : . • . just about two 
hours from his being taken. . . . The Doctors were in an- 
other room Consulting what to doe. . . . Tis thought cut- 
ting his finger, might bring on the tumultuous passion that 
carried him away. There was a dolefull cry in the house." 

Three days later Mr. Willard was buried ; both of 
the Mathers were among his bearers. And on the 2d 
of October, a fast day, the Mathers conducted after- 
noon exercises at the Old South. 

The first business of the Corporation of Harvard 
College was to elect a President. Increase Mather 
was nearly sixty-nine years old. But Cotton Mather 
was only forty-four. His learning, his piety, his ortho- 
doxy, and his devotion to the old principles of the 
College, made him, in his own opinion, the proper suc- 
cessor of Mr. Willard. There is reason to think that 
the want of deliberate judgment which naturally came 
from his overworked, overwrought habits of life, led his 
hopes to run high. So what happened on the 28th of 
October must have stung him to the quick. 

" The Fellows of Harvard College meet," writes Sewall, 
"and chuse Mr. Leverett President: He had eight votes, 
Dr. Increase Mather three, Mr. Cotton Mather one." 

Within the week Sewall saw for the first time a docu- 
ment that gave rise to much excitement in Boston. 

' Willaid's colleague at the Old South. 



222 COTTON MATHER. 

This was " A Memorial of the Present Deplorable State 
of New England," ^ lately published in London, and 
stating with great distinctness every charge against 
Dudley. These were supported by sundry affidavits, 
and by a long letter, evidently written by Cotton 
Mather. It is dated October 2, 1706 :^ it specifically 
mentions the proceedings against Phillips and the other 
illicit traders, and contains this passage : — 

" Our Present Governour is not without a number of 
those, whom he has by Promotions and Flatteries made 
his Friends; but this hinders not a much more consider- 
able number, from wishing, that we had a Governour, who 
would put an end unto the horrid Reign of Bribery, in our 
Administration, and who would not Infinitely incommode 
Her Majesty's Service, by keeping the People in con- 
tinual Jealousies of his Plots, upon their most Valuable 
Interests." 

On the I St of November, the day when Sewall saw 
this pamphlet, the Governor produced in the Council 
a copy of the petition for his removal, and requested 
the Council to vote their abhorrence of it. Sewall 
pleaded for delay, but the vote was passed. The Dep- 
uties refused to concur in it. At a Conference of the 
Houses on the 20th, 

" Gov. made a long speech, begihing from his father, 
who laid out a Thousand pounds in the first adventure, 
was Governour. He himself the first Magistrat born in 
New England . . . Took an opportunity to say, he heard 

^ Reprinted at the beginning of the second volume of Sewall's 
Diary, and summarized by Palfrey, Book IV. Chap. VHI. It is 
in a reply to this pamphlet that the scandalous story appeared 
which I lately cited, page 209. 

2 Sewall's Diary, II. 40*-42*. 



JOSEPH DUDLEY. 223 

some whisper'd as if the Council were not all of a mind : 
He with courage said that all the Council were of the same 
mind as to every word of the Vote. This gall'd me ; yet I 
knew not how to contradict him before the Houses." At 
another conference next day, " the Govr. had the Extract 
of many of Mr. C. M. Letters read, of a later date than 
that in the printed book, . . . giving him a high charac- 
ter." On the 25th of November, "The Govr. read Mr. 
Cotton Mather's letter ... in Council. . . . When the 
Govr. came to the horrid Reign of Bribery : His Excel- 
lency said. None but a Judge or Juror could be Brib'd, the 
Governour could not be bribed, sons of Belial brot him 
no Gifts. Moved that [a committee] go to Mr. Cotton 
Mather with the Copy of his Letter, . . . and his Letters 
to the Govr., and speak to him about them: this was 
agreed to. I shew'd some backwardness, . . . hinting 
whether it might not be better for the Govr. to go to him 
himself: That seem'd to be Christ's Rule, except the Govr. 
would deal with him in a Civil way. ... p. m. I desired 
the Governour's patience to speak a word; I said I had 
been concerned about the Vote pass'd Novr. i. 'At the 
Conference his Excellency was pleas'd to say, that every 
one of the Council remain'd steady to their vote, and every 
word of it; This Skrewing the Strings of your Lute to 
that height, has broken one of them ; and I find my self 
under the Necessity of withdrawing my Vote ; . . . and 
desire the Secretary may be directed to enter it in the 
Minutes of the Council.' And then I delivered my Rea- 
sons for it,i written and sign'd with my own Hand. . . . The 
Govr. directed that it should be kept privat : but I think 
Col. Lynde went away before the Charge was given. . . . 
Nov. 26 Mr. Secretary reports the Discourse with Mr. 
Cotton Mather favourably; It seems they stay'd there 

^ Borland, one of the convicted traders, had given Sevvall to 
understand that the charges against Dudley were true ; but 
subsequently denied Sewall's construction of his words. vSee 
Sewall's Diary, IL 215, 216. 



2 24 COTTON MATHER. 

more than two Hours ; and Dr. Mather was present. Mr. 
Mather neither denys nor owns the Letter : Think his 
Letters to the Govr. and that . . . not so inconsistent as 
they are represented. . . . The Council invited the Govr. 
to Diner ; . . . I drank to his Excellency, and presented 
my Duty to him. ... In the evening by Candle-Light I 
fell asleep in the Council-Chamber : and when I waked 
was surprised to see the Govr. gone." ^ 

On the 28th, Dudley wished the vote of November 
I St published, to prevent the spreading of false reports. 

" I said," writes Sewall, " I could not vote to it because 
I had withdrawn my vote. The Govr. said, I pray God 
judge between me and you ! . . . Lord, do not depart from 
me, but pardon my sin ; and fly to me in a way of favour- 
able Protection." 

On the 6th of December, there came before the 
Council a bill fixing the salary of the new President of 
Harvard College. To this was subjoined the following 
provision,^ which we should now call a '' rider " : — 

" And inasmuch as the first foundation ... of that 
House -^ . . . had its original from an act of the General 
Court, made and passed in the year one thousand six 
hundred and fifty, which has not been repealed or nulled ; 
the President and Fellows of the said College are directed 
... to regulate themselves according to the rules of the 
constitution by that act prescribed." 

Dudley and his Council approved this bill. The 
charter of 1650, thus revised, governs Harvard College 
to the present day. And thus it came about that Har- 
vard College, in spite of all the labours and prayers of 
the Mathers, has become, for better or worse, the per- 

^ Sewall's Diary, II. 199-204. 

2 Quincy, I. 159. ' I.e. Harvard College. 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 225 

petual nursery, not of priests, but of ever more earnest 
Protestants. 

How the defeated party took this matter appears in 
a note of Sewall's for December i8th : — 

"Mr. Bridge 1 . . . takes Job 15. 34.2 for his Text; 
especially that clause, — Fire shall consume the tabernacle 
of Bribery ; From which he preach'd an excellent sermon. 
. . . Dr. Mather not at Lecture. Governor . . . there." 

In spite of sermons, Leverett was inaugurated on 
the 1 8th of January. The Mathers were not present. 
Sewall gives a minute account of the ceremony. 

" In the Library the Governour found a Meeting of the 
Overseers . . . according to the old charter of 1650. . . . 
Took the President by the hand and led him down into the 
Hall. The Books of the College Records, Charter, Seal 
and Keys were laid upon a Table running parallel with that 
next the Entry. The Govr. sat with his back against a 
Noble Fire ; • • . President sat on the other side of the 
Table. . . . The Govr. read his Speech and (as he told 
me) mov'd the Books in token of their Delivery. Then the 
President made a short Latin Speech, importing the diffi- 
culties discouraging, and yet that he did Accept. . . . 
Had a very good Diner upon 3 or 4 Tables: . . . Got home 
very well. Laus DeoP 

On the 23d of January, Sewall attended a funeral. 
"When had gone a little way," he writes, '^ Mr. Cotton 
Mather came up and went with me." From the bury- 
ing place they went to make a call, where they had 
some very pious talk. 

1 Minister of the First Church. 

2 "For the congregation of hypocrites shall be desolate, and 
fire shall consume the tabernacles of bribery " 

IS 



2 26 COTTON MATHER. 

" As went thence," continues Sewall, " told me of his 
Letter to the Govr. of the 20th Inst, and Lent me the Copy. 
, . . Dr. Mather it seems has also sent a Letter to the 
Govr. I wait with concern to see what the issue of this 
plain home-deahng will be ! " 

Palfrey^ and Quincy^ summarize these letters. As- 
suming all the spiritual authority of their ministry, the 
Mathers reiterate every charge that has been made 
against Dudley ; and rebuke him with every anathema 
of Puritanism. The letters are the agonizing death- 
cry of old New England. 

Two or three more notes of Sewall's tell what this 
" plain home-dealing " seemed to the victors. 

''Jany 31 Mr. Pemberton . . . talk'd to me very 
warmly about Mr. Cotton Mather's Letter to the Govr., 
seemed to resent it, and expect the Govr. should animad- 
vert upon him. Said if he were as the Govr. he would hum- 
ble him though it cost him his head; Speaking with great 
vehemency just as I parted with him at his Gate. The 
Lord apear for the Help of his people. — Feb. 2. . . . Some- 
body said, . . . That no man was admitted to be a Captain 
without giving the D. of Marlborough, or his Dutchess five 
hundred Guinys : the Govr. took it up, and said, What is 
that ! Speaking in a favourable, diminutive way. And said 
that there had not been any admitted these thousand years 
but in a way like that; mentioning his own experience in 
the Isle of Wight. His Excellency seems hereby to jus- 
tify himself against those who charge him with Bribery. — 
Febr. 5. Mr. Colman preaches the Lecture . . . from 
Gal. 5. 25. If we live in the Spirit, let we also Walk in the 
Spirit. Spake of Envy and Revenge as the Complexion 
and Condemnation of the Devil. . . . 'Tis reckoned he 
lash'd Dr. Mather and Mr. Cotton Mather and Mr. Bridge 

1 Vol. HL pp. 295, 296. '^ Vol. I pp. 201, 202. 



JOSEPH DUDLEY. 227 

for what they have written, preach'd and pray'd about the 
present Contest with the Govr," 

Next day, after a fortnight's waiting, Joseph Dudley 
sent his answer to the Mathers.^ With Scriptures as 
good as theirs, he recommended self-scrutiny to them. 
And he went on thus : — 

" Every one can see through the pretence, and is able to 
account for the spring of these letters, and how they would 
have been prevented, without easing any grievances you 
complain of. ... I desire you will keep your station, and 
let fifty or sixty good ministers, your equals in the province, 
have a share in the government of the College ... as well 
as yourselves. ... I am an honest man, and have lived 
religiously these forty years to the satisfaction of the min- 
isters in New England, and your wrath against me is cruel, 
and will not be justified. . . . The College must be dis- 
posed against the opinion of all the ministers in New Eng- 
land except yourselves, or the governor torn in pieces. 
This is the view I have of your inclination." 

And this is the view posterity has accepted, with 
what justice the records I have quoted may help to 
show. While the Mathers were reading this letter, 
Samuel Sewall, " in the uper Chamber of the North- 
East end of the House, fastening the Shutters next the 
Street," was holding a solemn fast. But though he 
prayed for so many things that the record covers a 
closely printed page, I found my eye caught chiefly by 
one passage : — 

" Save the Town, College, Province from Invasions of 
Enemies open. Secret and from false Brethren : Defend 
the Purity of Worship. Save Connecticut." ^ 

1 Palfrey, III. 297. 

2 Diary, II, 217. 10 February, 1707-8. 



XI. 



Cotton Mather's Private Life to the Death of 
HIS Second Wife. 

1707-1713. 

For the next six years Joseph Dudley remained Gov- 
ernor of Massachusetts. His quarrel with the Mathers 
seems never to have been settled. Throughout these 
years, Cotton Mather was busier than ever in his pas- 
toral work, and his endless plans for doing good in 
general ; and Increase Mather, growing old, and not 
gaining buoyancy of temper, preached and prayed, — 
not a little about the good old time. With pubhc 
offices and with the College, which prospered under the 
care of Leverett, neither seems to have had much to 
do. So the course of public affairs has little to do with 
us. In his relations with the General Court, Dudley 
seems, in his later days, to have been less aggressive. 
The war went on with varying success : Port Royal 
was taken in 17 10, but there were disasters later, Indian 
massacres all along. In fifty years, Hutchinson esti- 
mated,^ the population did not double : in 1709, Dud- 
ley estimated it at about fifty thousand, increasing at 
the rate of a thousand a year ; Hutchinson thinks that 
from five to six thousand of the youth of the country 

1 Palfrey, III. 303. 



PRIVATE LIFE. 229 

fell in the wars which ended with the welcome peace 
of Utrecht in 1713. Meanwhile, according to Palfrey/ 
a new generation was growing up under the Provincial 
charter, far more loyal to the Crown than the old 
independent Dissenters of the Colony. 

In this chapter our business will be to follow the 
private Hfe of Cotton Mather until 1713. 

Cotton Mather's diary for 1 708 is not preserved. 
But in the collection of the American Antiquarian 
Society is a copy in his handwriting, with the date 
1708, of Swift's burlesque prophecy of the death of 
Partridge, etc., which Cotton Mather seems to have 
taken in sober earnest. In Sewall I find but one note 
worth recording here. In June Mr. Bromfield received 
an anonymous letter, " putting him upon enquiring 
after Debaucheries at North's, the Exchange Tavern," 
and urging him to ask Sewall's advice. Cotton Math- 
er's constant eagerness to suppress disorder, his inti- 
mate relations with Bromfield and Sewall, and his 
frequent practice of " doing good " anonymously, make 
it not unlikely that this letter came from him. I can- 
not refrain from citing one more note of Sewall's, 
though — a little glimpse of manners : " Govr. calls 
and smokes a pipe with my wife at night Qr. i." 

Sewall's diary for 1 709 gives a few glimpses of the 
Mathers, with whom his relations were now cordially 
intimate. 

'' June 22. . . . Going to visit sick Mr. Gerrish ... I 
met Dr. Mather, who tells me that yesterday, he was 70 
years old.— Octobr. 6. . . . Mr. C. Mather preaches from 
Prov. 14. 14. Backslider in heart shall be filled with his 

1 Vol. 111. p. 302. 



230 COTTON MATHER. 

own Ways. Mention'd the indulgence of Adonijak ; the 
prophet Mlcajah ; not the prophet, but the King was hurt 
by his estrangement." 

There are glimpses of Dudley, too, giving no new 
traits; and on January 28th, this note: — 

" The Govr. told me of News from Albany, as if the 
French of Canaday were coming against us. The good 
Lord stop them ! " 

Cotton Mather's diary for 1 709 ^ is on the whole not 
noteworthy. On the 20th of June he makes an entry 
that is typical of the year : — 

" I am so full of employments ; and in such a happy way 
of continually every day doing a variety of services, which 
yett I do not ask to have remembered, that I have not 
the Leisure, which else I might have to replenish these 
memorials." 

Little Sam had a fever. Another son, Nathaniel, 
was born to him on the i6th of May, and died on the 
24th of November. I find but two other notes worth 
recording. In March, Mather was 

"assaulted with Solicitations [from Hell] to look upon the 
whole Christian Religion as — [I dare not mention what !] " 
but resolved to " Beleeve Him wise and Just and good, and 
confess myself unable to Judge of His Dispensations, but 
Refer all unto a Time when He shall please to entertain 
His people in another world with a Discovery of what He 
has done and meant in His former Dealings." 

At this time Mather was very poor, he remarks, — 
literally in rags. In September, the other ministers 
dined with the " Wicked Governor." 

^ In possession of the American Antiquarian Society. 



PRIVATE LIFE. 231 

"I," writes Cotton Mather, "have by my provoking 
plainness and Freedom in telhng this Ahab of his wicked- 
ness procured myself to be left out of his Invitations. I 
rejoiced in my Liberty from the Temptations with which 
they were encumbred while they were eating of his dain- 
ties, and durst not reprove him. . . . And considering the 
power and mahce of my enemies, I thought it proper for 
me to be this day Fasting in Secret before the Lord." 

At the end of the diary is a long account of how he 
is accustomed on rising every morning to enter in a 
book '' Good Devices " for the day : of them w^e shall 
hear more by and by. The volume closes, as usual, 
with notes of the course of his preaching for the year : 
among which is one telling how when his sermon was 
three quarters preached his meeting was broken up 
by a fire, and how when the congregation returned 
he began afresh and preached a brand-new sermon 
extempore. 

His diary for 17 10 is not preserved. Sewall tells a 
little of what happened to the Mathers. On the 3d 
of April there was difficulty in finding a minister to 
preach the election sermon : and though Mr. Pember- 
ton finally agreed to do it, his temper — a very excit- 
able one — was up. So when "■ word was brought that 
Dr. Mather was chosen to preach the Artillery Ser- 
mon, Mr. Pemberton said Must choose agen." Several 
notes of Sewall's this year show the infirmity of Pem- 
berton' s temper : the divine had an unconfortable way 
of accosting his parishioner in public places and up- 
braiding him at the top of his voice. 

Towards the end of the year Cotton Mather received 
from the University of Glasgow the degree of Doctor 



232 COTTON MATHER. 

of Divinity. Even in Samuel Matlier's lifeless book we 
can see how grateful the good man found this honour : 
for one thing he immediately began to wear a signet- 
ring bearing '^ a Tree with Psal, i . 3 ^ written under it ; 
and about it Glascua Rigavit? The Cast of his Eye 
upon this, constantly provoked him to pray. . . . O 
God, make me a very fruitful T7'ee.'" ^ But he was not 
permitted to enjoy his title unmolested. One John 
Banister wrote thereupon the following verses. 

"On C. Mr's. Diploma. 

" The mad enthusiast, thirsting after fame, 
By endless volum'ns thought to raise a name. 
With undigested trash he throngs the Press ; 
Thus striving to be greater, he's the less, 
But he, in spite of infamy, writes on, 
And draws new Cullies in to be undone. 
Warm'd with paternal vanity, he trys 
For new Subscriptions, while the Embryo [his two vol- 

umns] * lyes 
Neglected — Parkhurst ^ says, Satis fecisti^ 
My belly's full of your Magnalia Christi. 
Your crude Divinity, and History 
Will not with a censorious age agree. 
Daz'd with the stol'n title of his Sire,^ 
To be a Doctor he is all on fire : 

1 '' And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, 
that bringeth forth his fruit in his season ; his leaf also shall not 
wither ; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper." 

'^ Glasgow has watered it. 

3 See S. Mather's Life, pp. 74-77. ^ " Biblia Americana." 

5 The publisher of the " Magnalia." 

^ Increase Mather, it will be remembered, was made Doctor 
of Divinity under the Harvard charter of 1692, subsequently dis- 
approved by the King. See pages 135-137- 



PRIVATE LIFE. 233 

Would after him the Sacrilege commit 

But that the Keeper's [Leverett], care doth him affright. 

To Britain's Northern Clime in haste he sends, 

And begs an Independent boon from Presbyterian friends; 

Rather than be without, he 'd beg it of the Fiends. 

Facetious George brought him this Libertie 

To write C. Mather first and then D. D." 1 

On the 25th of November Increase Mather laid this 
libel before Sewall. On the 28th, Sewall had Banister 
and others before him in consequence, and, in spite of 
a letter from i^otton Mather in favor of Banister, 
imposed a fine on him. This greatly stirred up Mr. 
Pemberton, who had lately been abused by a certain 
Captain Martin, against whom no proceedings had 
been taken. 

" Mr. Pemberton," writes Sewall, " with extraordinary 
Vehemency said, (capering with his feet) If the Mathers 
ordered it, I would shoot him thorow. I told him he was 
in a passion. He said he was not in a Passion. I said, it 
was so much the worse. . . . The truth is I was surpris'd 
to see my self Insulted with such extraordinary Fierceness, 
by my Pastor, just when I had been vindicating two wor- 
thy Embassadors of Christ (his own usual Phrase) from 
most villanous Libels. , . . These Things made me pray 
Earnestly . . . that God would vouchsafe to be my Shep- 
herd, and . . . bring me safely to his Heavenly Fold." 

And the same evening Sewall visited Madam Pem- 
berton, and gave the nurse three shillings ; which did 
not prevent Mr. Pemberton from giving out next Lord's 
day a most invidious psalm.^ 

1 Sewall's Letter-Book, I. 407. Cf. Diary, II. 290-295. 

2 For all this matter, see Sewall's Diary, II. 290-295. 



234 COTTON MATHER. 

The only other note of Sevvall's I have recorded for 
this year runs as follows : — 

"Mid-week, Jany. 31. Went and heard Mr. Bridge, 
and Dr. Cotton Mather pray and preach, at the said Dr's 
House. . . . Dr. Mathers [Text was] The whole world 
lyes in Wickedness. Had Cake and Butter and Cheese, 
with good Drinks, before parting." 

In Sewall's diary for 1711, I find little that concerns 
us. The Mathers were as busy as ever. On the 31st 
of May, Mr. Wadsworth gave a dinner for the Gover- 
nor, to which he invited both the Mathers : and both 
came, — a fact which throws a little fresh light on 
Cotton Mather's secret fast in September, 1709.^ 

Cotton Mather's diary for 1711^ is different from 
all the preceding ones. Those, as I have said, are not 
the original copies, but abridgements made by him- 
self; rather annual autobiographies than diaries proper. 
This volume and the six others that remain are origi- 
nal copies, hastily written from day to day, and little 
revised. They differ in character from the others, too. 
Instead of being records of what has happened, they 
are generally daily entries of good devised for each 
day, — with the letters " G. D." prefixed. Now and 
then he inserts a passage that he thinks worth remem- 
bering. So we have now, for the years whose records 
are presented, a daily note of what he means to do, 
and occasional notes of what has actually been done. 
One troublesome fact about the diary for 1 7 1 1 is that 
he usually enters there only the days of the week, leav- 

1 See page 231. 

2 In possession of the American Antiquarian Society. 



PRIVATE LIFE. 235 

ing the month to be calculated as best it may. The 
truth seems to be that, about this time, he concluded 
that he had wasted too much time on the records of 
his life : there were other things better worth doing. 

His birthday note, with which this volume, like all 
the rest, begins, shows this state of mind. Hereafter 
he will keep no separate book of good devices : they 
shall be entered in his regular diary. He had devised 
a set of questions to ask himself each day : on Sunday, 
for example, he asked what he should do as a pastor ; on 
Monday, what he should do for his family ; and so on. 

" There is no need of Repeating here," he writes, " The 
questions assigned for each day of the Week. My answer 
to each of them will be a Good Devised, for which a G. D. 
will be the Distinction in these Memorials." 

Daily good devices fill the pages of this volume, 
which is twice as thick as any of the preceding ones. 
Perhaps his most curious note hereabouts is this : — 

" Having some Epistolar Conversation with Mr. De 
Foe I would in my letters unto him, excite him to apply 
himself unto the work of collecting and publishing an 
History of the persecutions which the Dissenters have 
undergone from the Ch. of E, —And give him some Di- 
rections about the work. It may be a work of manifold 
usefulness." 

Somewhat later, curious reflections follow a fit of 
cholera morbus and a morning cough : the latter moves 
him to ejaculate, " Oh ! that I may always cast up 
and throw off, whatever may be inimical to the Health 
of my Soul ! " On the 2d of October there was a 
great fire in Boston, which aroused proper reflections 
in Cotton Mather ; and which Increase Mather attrib- 



236 COTTON MATHER. 

uted to the growing profanation of the Sabbath. Later 
in the same month we find Cotton Mather writing to 
Sir Richard Blackmore and to Dr. Watts, whose hymns 
he greatly admired. At intervals through the year he 
mentions his cousin, Eunice Williams, a captive among 
the Indians, whose mode of life she ultimately adopted. 
At Christmas he was greatly disturbed by some young 
people of both sexes belonging to his flock, who had 
" a Frolick, a Revelling Feast, and Ball, which discovers 
their corruption." And a month later he writes : — 

" Fast. ... I took the catalogue of the Books which I 
have been the Author of. The Number in the Catalogue 
is Two hundred and five. On each of the Titles I made a 
pause. And I obliged Every one of them, to suggest 
unto me some Remarkable Article of Humiliation, which 
I thereupon with an Abased Soul mentioned before the 
Lord." 

But the most interesting notes this year concern his 
family. Early in the year he notes a good device not 
to use his influence against a merchant who has injured 
him. 

"No sooner had I written these words," he goes on, 
" but there was a pretty occurrence in the Family which 
carried with it a fine picture and Emblem ... of the Dis- 
position which I am Endeavoring. My little son Sammy 
did not carry it so kindly to his little sister Lizzy as I would 
have had him. 1 chid him for his crossness, and gave her 
a piece oi pome-cif?'oii, but would give none to him, to pun- 
ish him for being so cross to her. I had no sooner turned 
my back but the good-conditioned creature fell into Tears 
at this punishment of her little Brother, and gave to him a 
part of what I had bestowed upon her." 

Somewhat later, he writes that his son Increase, now 



PRIVATE LIFE. 237 

about twelve years old, is giving him trouble. Later 
still, he writes that the time is come for his daughters 
to be " fixed " in '' the opificial and Beneficial mysteries 
wherein they should be well instructed." Katy, he 
decides, shall be taught medicine ; the inclinations of 
Nibby and Nancy shall be consulted before he reaches 
a decision about them. Another daughter, Jerusha, 
was born this year. But towards the end of the year 
Increase is most in his mind. 

"My Son Increase," he writes, " now being of Age for 
it, I would often call him into my Study, especially on the 
Lord's-day Evenings, and make him sitt with me, and hear 
from me such Documents of piety, and of Discretion, as I 
shall endeavor to suit him, and to shape him withal " A lit- 
tle later : " It may be of excellent consequence to my son 
Increase if he may turn into Latin, after the rate of one 
Question p. day, my Supplies frojn the Tower of David. 
It may also supply me with an Engine, which after my 
bestowing further Additions on it, may do inexpressible 
good in other Countreys." And his last daily note for the 
year runs thus : " G. D. Now my son Increase is arrived 
unto the exercise of making Themes, at the School, I would 
make this become an Engine of piety for him ; and I 
would procure such subjects to be assigned unto him, as 
may most assist the study of goodness and virtue in him." 

An active, busy year this seems to have been ; less 
morbid than most. His final summary of it is perhaps 
worth recording : — 

" Thus I am come to the end of another year, over- 
whelmed with confusion, when I look back on the Sin and 
Sloth constantly attending me in it. It is true I have been 
helped by Heaven this year, To Lett not One Day pass, 
without Contriving and Recording, some Inventions to do 



238 COTTON MATHER. 9 

Good ; And those which have pass'd thro' my pen are but 
a few of the projections which I have had: ... To lett 
not One Day pass, without actually expending something of 
my Revenues ... on pious uses : To write some Illus- 
trations for the most part Every Day ; doubtless ... I 
have this year added unto the Biblia Afnericana , . . more 
than a thousand : To preach many Sermons . . . : To 
pubhsh near as many books as there have been Months in 
the year : . . . To make many hundreds of Visits ; but 
never One, without some Explicit Essays or Desires to Do 
Good in it : To manage some scores of Correspondencies ; 
and ... to propose the Service of my Glorious Lord in 
every one of them : ... To read over many Scores of 
Books, and gather into my Quotidiana from them : etc. etc. 
etc. But after all, o my dear Saviour, I stand in infinite 
need of thy Sacrifice. I have been a most unprofitable 
Servant. God be merciful to me a Sinner ! " 

Mather's diary for 1712 is not preserved. In Sew- 
all's I find nothing especial about him, except that he 
went to Commencement. From a note in Quincy,i it 
appears that a new Catalogue of the College was printed 
at this time. Leverett asked Dudley if Mather had 
ever apologized for the " undutiful " letter of 1707 : if 
not, Leverett supposed Cotton Mather's new title had 
better not be recognized in the Catalogue. But Dud- 
ley told him not to leave out the title on any such 
account. And in Harvard Catalogues ever since Cotton 
Mather has been Doctor of Divinity. In the Mather 
Papers ^ are preserved some of his letters this year to 
John and to Wait Winthrop : they show him deeply in- 
terested in the European news of the day, which chiefly 
concerns the approaching Peace of Utrecht. And Sib- 

1 Vol. I. p. 520. 2 Pages 407-415. 



PRIVATE LIFE. 239 

ley names fifteen books published by Cotton Mather 
during the year. 

So we come to his diary for 1713/ an eventful year 
in Cotton Mather's domestic life. At the very begin- 
ning of the year, we find him in much disturbance of 
mind because some of his flock had been inspired by 
Satan with the idea of starting a new meeting. He 
did his best to reason with them, but to little purpose. 
And towards the middle of March he writes : — 

*' I ought to . . . grow in my Thankfulness to the glori- 
ous Lord, in that I have my mind preserved from Hypo- 
chondriac Maladies, which, considering my Studies and 
Sorrowes, tis a wonder, they have not utterly overwhelmed 
me. The view I have of some other men, unhing-ed and 
ruined that way, very much awakens my gratitude." 

One of the other men in question was probably the 
Rev. Ebenezer Pemberton. But a note on the 24th of 
March shows trials nearer home : — 

" Still my aged parent must be the object of my cares ; 
To make him easy under his Resentments of the proceed- 
ings about the New Church ; and to procure him Releefs 
against Bodily Distempers that somewhat incommode 
him ; and to gett his mind raised unto the points of Resig- 
nation to God and Satisfaction in His Will, which become 
us in the Suburbs of the Heavenly World." — " God calls 
me," he writes a few days later, " in an extraordinary man- 
ner to be armed for the Trials which I may undergo in a 
church, breaking all to peeces, thro' the Imperdnencies of 
a proud crew, that must have pues for their despicable 
Families.'' 

So he prayed and fasted, and had his son Increase 
^ In possession of the American Antiquarian Society. 



240 COTTON MATHER. ■ 

come in and pray too. Not long afterwards he real- 
ized that he was growing too impatient of slights, and 
resolved to govern his temper. 

In April he was still in high excitement. 

" There is one point in my Conversation," he writes, 
early in the month, " wherein I must press after much 
greater Sanctity and purity; and have my Behaviour in it 
more governed by that Reflexion, The Eye of the Great 
God is ?iow upon me / . . . And I must go mourning to 
my grave, in the sense of the miscarriages, in this point, 
wherewith His Holy Eyes have seen me chargeable." 

A little later comes the vigil in which he begged to 
know the meaning of the descent from the invisible 
world so many years before.^ 

Education is the next thing in his mind. Increase, 
it is clear, must be "applied unto Saccular Business," 
and he must cry to Heaven thereabout. The tutors at 
the College must be reminded that they ought to " in- 
still good principles into their pupils, and be concerned 
for their Orthodox and Religious, as well as Learned 
education." And a Httle later, he notes that he has 
"litt on a person" to restrain "profaneness in a con- 
siderable number of Unruly children on the Lord's day 
in our Congregation." About this time returned the 
hypochondriac notion that he was near his end, which 
often assailed him ; he must select guardians for his 
children. A httle later, he determined to write phy- 
sicians '' to obtain for me, as much as may be, of the 
knowledge of the Botanicks of the countrey : as also of 
rare cures or cases occurring to them." And a little 
later still comes this : — 

1 See page 123. 



PRIVATE LIFE. 241 

" My poor son Increase ! Oh ! the Distress of mind 
with which I must lett fall my daily Admonitions upon him, 
even with a continual Dropping, especially on these Two 
points : Conversion to God, in a Sincere compliance with 
His Covenant: And, The Care of Spending Time so as to 
give a good Account of it." 

Then the new church troubled him again : — 

" When any persons . . . fall into errors and evils, and 
great miscarriages, I must keep a guard of meekness and 
wisdom on the expression of my zeal. . . . Violent, Bois- 
terous, Intemperate Expressions . . . will not work the 
Righteousness of God. I am afraid lest I am sometimes too 
vehement." In answer to this resolution the Lord helped 
him to treat " the swarming Brethren " in an obliging man- 
ner, — "the best thing I can do to prevent the wiles of 
Satan." A few days later, " in a wicked book I readd a 
fling at clergymen, as a Revengeful generation of men, 
who never Forgive such as have offended them. I do 
not remember, for my own part, that ever I designed 
the Revenge of an Injury in my life. However, this Ven- 
emous Fling, shall quicken my Watchfulness, upon this 
Article." 

Within a few days he had a chance to quicken it : — 

" G. D. There are Knotts of Riotous Young Men in the 
Town. On purpose to insult piety they will come under 
my Window in the middle of the Night and sing profane 
and filthy Songs. The last night they did so, and fell upon 
people with clubs taken off my wood-pile. Tis high-time, 
to call in the help of the Government ... for the . . . 
suppressing of these disorders." 

On the I St of July, he took his son Increase to 
Commencement.^ On the 4th, he held a vigil for the 

1 Sewall's Diary, II. 390. 
16 



242 COTTON MATHER. 

" Impurities which my life has been filled withal. . . . 
From the Depths I cried unto the Lord, for his grace to be 
given unto my children: particularly my son Increase." 

The youth, now about fourteen, was beginning to 
show himself what he ultimately proved, — a sadly 
riotous young man. And this may have been what 
prompted another good device, a few weeks later. 

'M have shown too much Respect unto Wicked Men in 
my Conversation. . . . Though my Intention has been to 
show all Gentleness to all men . . . yett I doubt, less Free- 
dom with such Wretches, less Familiarity with such Devils, 
would have been better." 

So the year goes on, his family more and more on 
his mind. On the birthdays of his children, he re- 
solves, he will 

" not only discourse very proper and pungent things . . . 
relating to their eternal Interests, but also oblige them to 
consider ; first, what is their main Errand into the World j 
and then, what they have done of that Errand. And such 
of them as are old enough to Write, shall give me some 
Written Thoughts upon these things." 

His negro servant was best governed by reason : he 
would assay to reason him into good behaviour.^ His 
" aged parent " — the phrase by which he names his 
father from this time on — was out of order. 

" I would persuade him to a frequent use of the sal vola- 
tile, which God has blessed unto me for more than ordi- 

1 In the library of the American Antiquarian Society is an in- 
teresting memorandum of the conditions on which, a little later, 
this negro, Onesimus, bought his freedom. He was to see that 
his place was properly supplied, and to turn up every day 
accordingly. 



PRIVATE LIFE. 243 

nary Benefit, and I would prevent him with a Bottle of it." 
And when the remedy worked, he resolved " mightily to 
double my diligence, especially in Afternoon-Studies, for 
the Dispatch of those things I would fain finish before 
I Dy." 

Meanwhile Increase was always on his mind : one 
day he made him read the life of a pious youth ; again, 
while seeking a place for him, he would have him 
"preserve learning," and would daily inquire if he has 
made secret prayers ; a little later, when the youth had 
blown up himself and his sister Lizzy with gunpowder, 

" I would improve this occasion to inculcate Instructions 
of piety in them and the rest ; Especially with Relation to 
their Danger of Eternal Burnings. Cressy ^ must also 
employ the leisure which this had occasioned for him, in the 
most profitable manner" : there had been lately an oppor- 
tunity " to gett . . . Increase cultivated with many points 
of polite conversation, in his Evening-Hours." Another 
note runs thus: " Oh ! Why don't I in my Family more 
Hvelily keep up the Temper and Conduct of a parent ex- 
pecting to be Speedily taken from his Family ? " Another 
still : " My youngest little daughter ^ is a marvellous 
Witty, Ready, Forward Child " : he would set the others 
to teaching her maxims of piety. Towards the end of 
September, the death of an " aged and pious Matron (the 
First-born of this Town) . . . affords mean opportunity to 
discourse with my mother, upon her preparation." 

A little later, he was trying to get Increase a place 
with a rehgious merchant, in good business ; and 
selecting guardians for his children ; and praying to 
the Lord that He would return to them what their 
father had spent in charity. 

1 Increase. 2 Jerusha, born in 171 1. 



244 COTTON MATHER. 

I find but three other notes before October worth 
recording. The first runs thus : — 

" G. D. Perhaps by sending some Agreeable Things to 
the Author of the Spectator, and the Guardian, there may 
be brought forward some Services to the best Interests of 
the Nation." 

The second expresses an intention to help an old 
man in the town, eighty- eight years old and needy, 
" who was a souldier in the Army of my admirable 
Cromwel, and actually present in the Battel of Dun- 
bar^ The third is a resolution to counteract the cor- 
ruption spread by '' filthy ballads," by having cheap 
hymns hawked about, — " some from the excellent 
Watts." 

The rest of his story for this year is more notable in 
his personal history. 

" I2d. 8m. 1 This Day, in Ships arriving from London, 
I receive Letters from the Secretary of the Royal Society, 
who tells me, That my Curiosa A?nerica7ia being Readd 
before that Society, they were greatly Satisfied therewith, 
and ordered the Thanks of the Society to be returned unto 
me ; They also Signified their Desire and purpose to Ad- 
mitt me as a Member of their Body. And, he assures me, 
that at their first lawful Meeting for such purposes, I shall 
be made a A Fellow of the Royal Society. . . . This 
is a marvellous Favour of Heaven ; . • . One that will much 
Encourage me . . . in my Essayes to Do Good : and add 
unto the Superiour Circumstances, wherein my Gracious 
Lord places me above the Contempt of Envious Men." So 
he cried to the Lord hereby to quicken his "Diligence in 
His Holy Service "; and resolved to improve his " Corre- 
spondence with the Secretary of the Royal Society^ to sett 

1 October I2th. 



PRIVATE LIFE. 245 

afoot among the members thereof, such studies as may be 
for general Benefit, and have hitherto been but little 
prosecuted." 

In less than a week he writes : — 

*' A very deep storm ... my family may expect in the 
common calamity of the spreading Measles." 

Increase fell ill on the 1 8th : on the 30th, Katy and 
Nibby came down. The same day Mrs. Mather was 
brought to bed of twins, — a boy and a girl. 

"The Glorious God," he writes, "in the Surprising In- 
crease of my Family, rebukes my sinful Fears of having 
them all well-provided for. Thro' the Assistance of his 
Grace, I find my Soul rejoicing in the View of my having 
in my Family more Servants born unto my Saviour. . . . 
I must march against the least Tendencies of Unbelief." 

On the I St of November the twins were baptized: 
the girl was named for her maternal grandmother, 
Martha, which 

"signifying Doctrix may the better suit (as my Father said) 
a Doctor's Daughter. I then thought, who was Martha's 
brother ; and that Eleazar was the same with Lazarus ; and 
a priestly name ; and the child must be led to look for the 
Help of God, which is the signification of the Name. I 
also had an excellent uncle of that Name.^ So I called 
them Eleazar and Martha." 

In three days measles had attacked his wife, Nancy, 
Lizzy, Jenisha, and the maid. 

"8. 9.2 This Day, I entertained my Neighbourhood 
with a Discourse on Joh. xviii. 11. : The cup which my 
Father has given me^ shall not I drink it. And lo, this 
Day, my Father is giving me a grievous and Bitter Cup, 
which I hop'd had pass'd from me. . . . When I saw my 

1 See page 25. - November 8th. 



246 COTTON MATHER. 

consort safely delivered, and very easy, and the Measles 
appearing with favourable symptoms upon her ... I 
flattered myself that my Fear was all over. But this Day 
we are astonished at the surprising symptoms of Death 
upon her ; after an Extreme want of Rest by Sleep, for 
Diverse whole Dayes and Nights together. — To part with 
so desirable ... a companion — A Dam from such a Nest 
of young ones too ! — . . . Tho' my dear Consort had 
been so long without sleep, yett she retained her under- 
standing. I used my opportunities as well as I could, . . . 
with Discourses that night ... to prepare her for what 
was now before us. It comforted her to see, that her chil- 
dren in Law, were as fond of her, as her own could be ! 
God made her willing to Dy. . . . I prayed with her many 
Times, and left nothing undone, that I could ... do for 
her consolation. On Monday, 9d. 9m., between three and 
four in the Afternoon, my dear, dear, dear Friend expired. 
— Whereupon, with another prayer in that Melancholy 
Chamber, I endeavoured the Resignation to which I am 
now called. ... It comforts me to see how extremely Be- 
loved and Lamented a Gentlewoman I now find her to be in 
the Neighbourhood." 

" 10. 9. In the midst of my Sorrowes . . . the Lord 
helped me to prepare no less than Two Sermons, for 
a public Thanksgiving, which is to be celebrated the 
day after tomorrow.'^ 

"II. 9. This day, I interred the Earthly part of my 
dear Consort. She had an Honourable Funeral." 

And Sewall tells us that among her bearers were 
Pemberton and Colman. 

" 14. 9. This morning, the first thing that entertains me, 
after my Rising, is, the Death of my Maid-Servant. . . . 
Tis a satisfaction to me, that tho' she had been a Wild, 
Vain, Airy Girl, yett since her coming into my Family, she 
became disposed unto serious Religion : . . . and my poor 



PRIVATE LIFE. 247 

Instructions were the means that God blessed for such 
happy purposes." 

Next day Jerusha and the twins lay dying ; Eleazar 
died at midnight on the 1 7th, Martha on the morning 
of the 20th. 

''21. 9. This Day I attended the Funeral of my Two 
— Eleazar and Martha. Betwixt 9 and 10 at night, my 
lovely Jerusha expired. She was Two years, and about 
Seven Months, old. Just before she died, she asked me 
to pray with her; which I did, with a Distressed, but Re- 
signing Soul ; And I gave her up unto the Lord. The 
minute that she died, she said, That she would go to Jes7is 
Christ. She had lain speechless, many Hours. But in 
her last Moments, her speech returned a little to her. 
Lord, I am oppressed : undertake for me ! " 

" 23. 9, This Day, I followed my dear Jerusha to the 
grave. But having a mind, full of Resignation, with Reso- 
lutions more than ever to glorify my dear Saviour ; espe- 
cially in what I may do for my own, and other children." 

There were none in his family now, he remarked, 
under seven years old. Much might be done at table, 
then, for both their manners and their minds. A little 
later, 

" The Quiet and Easy and unhurried Condition which 
my Family (by sad things) is bro't unto, gives me now 
Opportunity to examine more Distinctly my children every 
night." 

Along with religious books, he wrote and published 
a letter on the " Right Management of the Sick under 
the Distemper of the Measles." 

Cressy was much on his mind : the boy must study 
fencing, music, geometry, navigation ; " his genius 
stands much that way." 



248 COTTON MATHER. 

" My two Younger Children, ^ shall before the psalm and 
prayer, answer a Quaestion in the catechism ; and have 
their Leaves ready turned unto the proofs of the Answer 
in the Bible; which they shall distinctly read unto us, and 
show what they prove. This also will supply a fresh matter 
for the prayer that is to follow." 

Late in January he wrote to a gentleman in Con- 
necticut, urging him first to be good, and then to do 
good : by which it seems probable that he meant give 
money to the College that was soon to be called Yale. 
And his last note for the year runs thus : — 

"I must in the Society for pure purposes, bring on an 
Enquiry, what may be done for the suppression of some 
very wicked Houses, that are the nests of much Impiety. 
I must also assist the Booksellers in Addressing the As- 
sembly, that their late Act Against pedlers, may not hinder 
their Hawkers from carrying Books of piety about the 
countrey. . . . And thus, the goodness, and mercy, of the 
glorious Lord, has brought me to the end of another year. 
The Fifty-first year of my age is terminated." 

1 Elizabeth and Samuel, the latter just seven years old. 



1 



XII. 

Cotton Mather's Private Life. — His Third 
Marriage. 

1713-1718. 

The history of Massachusetts for the next five years 
has Httle to do with our story. In brief what happened 
was this. In 17 14, Queen Anne died ; and on the 2 2d 
of September, George I. was proclaimed at Boston. 
The commission of Joseph Dudley expired six months 
after the death of the sovereign. Sewall's Diary ^ shows 
how reluctantly the first of the Tories relinquished 
power ; but relinquish he had to at last, and retired to 
private life at Roxbury for the rest of his days. Next 
year, a certain Colonel Burgess was appointed Gover- 
nor : he was unwelcome to the Province, whose agents 
paid him a round sum to decline the office. Lieutenant 
Governor Tailer was at the head of affairs until 1716. 
On October 4th, Samuel Shute, the new Governor, ar- 
rived in Boston. The next two years passed in various 
misunderstandings with the legislature, about which we 
need not trouble ourselves. 

Our business in this chapter is to follow Cotton 
Mather's hfe to the close of 1718. 

Cotton Mather's Diary for 1714 is not preserved; 
but in the Mather Papers are several of his letters to 
the Winthrops during that year. They show him inter- 

1 Vol. III. pp. 35-39. 



250 COTTON MATHER. 

ested in scientific and public matters. And one of 
them, of the 2d of March, contains a passage worth 
quoting. For it shows that after all he might have 
been no bad contributor to the "Spectator" : he was 
not insensible to the literary style of the new century. ^ 

"There has been much Talk," it runs,^ "about a Duel 
fought between the Duke Hajnilton^ and the Lord Mohun. 
. . . The former finding himself mortally wounded, made 
it an opportunity to thrust his Sword up to the Hilt in the 
unguarded body of the other. So both perished. ... — I 
am now on a New side of the leaf, and so may take the 
Liberty to divert you with a short story ; which therefore 
will not necessarily belong to anything in the t'other page. 
You knew old Major Thojnpsoii. He had a story, that 
a young Nobleman, travelling with his Tutor, visited a 
church in Italy ^ and viewing the Epitaphs, ask'd his Tutor 
to read one of them, which was not very legible. He read 
TroTrvXoKoXoOpoTTov [a word, whereof I am not learned enough 
to know the Etymology]. The Nobleman enquired what 
the English of it.? And the Tutor answered, T/ie World 
is well rid of a K^iave. And so my old Major, was used, 
when he heard of the Death of certain persons, only to Lift 
up his hands, and say Populokolothropoii. And others 
also, would quere Major Tho7npso7i^ s Greek, as they called 
it, on such occasions." 

Sewall's Diary gives us a few more facts for this year. 
On the 4th of April, Mrs. Increase Mather died after 
fifty-two years of wedded Hfe. One of her son's six- 
teen publications for this year was her funeral sermon. 

1 His "Political Fables" of 1692-3, reprinted in the " Andros 
Tracts," are another example of his lighter literary touch. 

2 Mather Papers, 416. Lovers of " Henry Esmond " will find 
this task interesting. 



HIS THIRD MARRIAGE. 25 1 

Before very long, the venerable widower married the 
widow of her nephew, John Cotton, of Hampton : she 
survived him. On the 20th of October, the " swarm- 
ing brethren " gathered their New North Church, 
founded by "seventeen substantial mechanics"; and 
Increase Mather gave the charge, and Cotton IMather 
the right hand of fellowship, Pemberton joining them 
in laying on their hands. On the 24th of November, 
"a very cold day," one Mr. George, a merchant of 
Boston, was laid in Sewall's tomb, " till Madam George 
have an oportunity to build one." Whether he was 
the ''facetious George" who brought over Cotton 
Mather's diploma in 1710,1 I know not: but of the 
widow we shall hear more. And on the 23d of 
December, 

" Dr. C. Mather preaches excellently from Ps. 37. Trust 
in the Lord, etc. only spake of the Sun being in the center 
of our System. I think it inconvenient to assert such 
problems." 

Sewall's Diary for 1 7 1 5 gives a few glimpses of the 
Mathers. Early in the year, they were much interested 
in the discussions about Dudley's tenure of office, which 
was fast drawing to a close. On the 13th of April, they 
enjoyed a singular satisfaction : the Governor, on the 
verge of enforced retirement, dined with the ministers ; 
and, as had happened at his first official feast in Boston,^ 
Increase Mather craved a blessing, and Cotton Mather 
gave thanks. On the 2d of August there was a fast at 
Mr. Colman's about calling another minister ; when in 
the afternoon 

1 See page 233. 2 gge page 191. 



252 COTTON MATHER. 

" Mr. Pemberton pray'd, Dr. Cotton Mather preach'd 
from Isa. 5. 6. latter clause, I will command the clouds, etc.i 
Excellently: censur'd him that had reproach 'd the Minis- 
try; . . . caird it a Satanick insult, twice over, and it found 
a kind Reception. ... I could wish the extremity of the 
censure had been forborn — Lest we be devoured one of 
another." 

A fortnight later, Mr. Pemberton vexed his parish- 
ioner by appearing in a '' Flaxen Wigg." On the 26th 
of September, Mr. Bridge died, — apparently the most 
cordial ally of the Mathers in the Boston ministry. 

"With him," writes Sewall, "much primitive Christianity 
is gone. . . . His Prayers and Sermons were many times 
Excellent; not always alike. It may be this Lethargick 
Malady might though unseen, be the cause of some Un- 
evenness. . . . We may justly fear he is taken away from 
Evil to Come. Isa. 57." 

For about this time trouble in England was expected. 
But a few days later came welcome news that all tu.- 
mults were quelled ; with which on the 7th of October 
Sewall visited "utrumque Doctorem." ^ 

Cotton Mather's Diary for 17 15 is not preserved. 
But in the collection of the American Antiquarian 
Society are three long memoranda in his handwriting 
which bear this date. The first is a copy of a letter 
to a lady, not named ; the following extract wall give 
a notion of its general character : — 

" If he [who now addresses you] be One who Looks 

1 " And I will lay it waste ; it shall not be pruned, nor digged ; 
but there shall come up briers and thorns : I will also command 
the clouds that they rain no rain upon it." 

2 " Both doctors " ; that is, the Mathers. 



HIS THIRD MARRIAGE. 253 

upon Love to his Neighbour, as a very essential Article of 
his Religion, and who so Loves every man, that the offer of 
an opportunity for the doing of Good unto any One, is the 
sweetest pleasure that can be given him, . . . it will be very 
Reasonably Inferred from hence, that the Gentlewoman 
who comes one day into the nearest Relation unto him, will 
be Lov'd by him, as much as can be wish'd by her." And 
he waxes warm about " Your bright Accomplishments, your 
shining piety, and your polite education, your superiour Ca- 
pacity, and a most refined Sense, and incomparable Sweet- 
ness of Temper, together with a Constellation of all the 
perfections that he can desire to see related unto him." 

This letter is very long indeed ; the second memo- 
randum is short enough to be quoted in full : — 

"2id. im.i 1715- In the Evening. — After some Words 
of decent Respect unto Mrs. G. — She said, she had 
thought fitt, to have one Interview alone with me, that I 
might fully know her mind, about the Matter I had pro- 
posed unto her. She remonstrated the Reproach that she 
had suffered in the Talk of people about that affair; and 
therefore she thought it time, to lett me know her Desire, 
that she might hear no more of it, and that I would Speak 
and Think no more of it. She said, There were other per- 
sons that would be more agreeable to me ; and in whom 
the prayers of many good people for me, would be more 
likely to be answered. She gave me to understand, That 
if it were not for a Regard she had unto my Character as a 
Minister, she should forbid my ever making any more 
Visits unto her. She said, My Visits would have been a 
consolation and satisfaction unto her if I had mentioned 
nothing of this affair: But she peremptorily forbad my 
Writing any more Letters unto her. She many times in- 
sisted on it, That I would say to all persons, As for the 

^ March 21st. 



254 COTTON MATHER. 

Matter talk'd of, there is nothing in it. I offered that I 
would say to All persons, Tis a Matter which Madam is 
not at present disposed to hear of. She then said :— But 
people will say. Why does she Entertain him? — if she 
have no purpose hereafter to allow of his Intentions ? — 
This she express'd herself desirous, that there should be 
no Occasion for. I represented unto her, some fatal con- 
sequences, Hkely to follow on this conduct. But she would 
not admitt any Apprehensions of them. The Conversation 
lasted for several Hours, On my part, it was as Calm, and 
as pertinent, and as obhging as my dull Witts could render 
it. With as full Answers as could be made unto the Things 
that were objected to me; and just Reasons for every step 
of my conduct. At last I said; Madaui^ To give you a 
full Testimony of my Honour and Esteem for you, My 
Satisfaction shall be entirely sacrificed unto Yours. She 
answered: Say and Hold.'''' 

The third memorandum is a copy of a very long 
letter to the Rev. Thomas Craighead, who had pro- 
posed that the pair have another interview. Mather 
thinks it undesirable for the moment, but begs Craig- 
head 

"to assure that excellent person, that my Resolutions to 
keep out of Sight . . . oppress my own mind with Vio- 
lence, which could be well borne, by none but One of my 
Age, and one so much used unto Sacrifices. . . . She may 
depend upon it, (tho', I know not, whether a Total Deliv- 
erance from me, would not make her yett more easy,) that 
I can by no means lay aside these Vast Respects. But 
must renew my endeavours one day to make her yett more 
sensible of them. However, to be free with you, I have 
strong Apprehensions that my Dying Hour will Intervene 
(which. Oh ! join with me in my praises to our dear Sav- 
iour for it,) I often even long for, and hope it will be the 
best Hour that ever I saw," 



HIS THIRD MARRIAGE. 255 

Who Mrs. G. was must remain a conjecture. But 
the following passage from Samuel Mather's book ^ is 
suggestive : — 

"In his Jifty-thirdyediY, July 5. 1715. he was married to 
his third Wife. She is the Daughter of the renowned and 
very learned Mr. Samuel Lee: She was the Widow of 
Mr. George, a worthy Merchant, when Dr. Mather 
pay'd his Respects unto her in order to be Marry'd. She 
is a Lady of many and great Accomplishments, and is the 
Doctor's disconsolate Widow.^ By this last Gentlewoman 
he had no issue." 

Cotton Mather's Diary for 1716^ begins with a 
birthday fast, in which his most remarkable petitions 
were for 

" the Good State of my Family ; the Welfare of my Son 
abroad ; the Rescue of my Daughter-in-Law from her un- 
happy Circumstances ; the comfortable Disposal of my 
Daughters in the Married Life." 

And amid such daily notes of good devised as fill his 
other diaries are occasional memoranda concerning his 
family affairs. Early in March he held a very ecstatic 
thanksgiving, in which, among other things, he writes, 

" I celebrated the Favours of Heaven to my Family, 
especially in the Excellent Mother that He has bestowed 
upon it." 

A marginal note, evidently made later, throws pain- 
ful light upon this: "Ah! Quam deceptus." * A 
glimpse of the beginning of his undeception comes 
in the middle of April : — 

1 Life, p. 13. 

2 Samuel Mather wrote in 1729. 

3 In the Library of the Congregational House, Boston. 
* " How I was deceived ! " 



256 COTTON MATHER. 

" My Religious and Excellent Consort meets with some 
Exercises, which oblige me, (and, oh ! how happy am I, 
in the conversation of so fine a Soul, and one so capa- 
ble of soaring to the higher Flights of piety!) To treat 
her very much on the point of having a Soul, wherein God 
alone shall be enthroned, and all the Creatures that usurped 
his Throne Ejected." 

Sammy at this time was ill of a fever ; and Increase, 
the subject of constant prayers and letters, was off on 
a voyage. 

Early in May, however, an edifying incident oc- 
curred. 

"A Wondrous Thing is come to pass," he writes on the 
6th. " My Consort's only Daughter has had an Husband, 
who has proved one of the Worst of men ; a sorry, sordid, 
froward, and exceedingly wicked Fellow. His Life would 
have kill'd the Child : and have utterly confounded, not 
only her Temporal Interest, but my Wife's also. I was a 
Witness of their Anguish, And almost a year ago, I began 
to have some Irradiations on my mind, which I communi- 
cated unto them, that before a year came about, they should 
see a Deliverance. However, I could not bring about my 
purposes, to beseech the Lord Thrice until towards the 
Beginning of the Winter. But then, I kept Three dayes of 
praye}'^ in every one of which, a principal errand unto 
Heaven was, to putt over this Wicked Creature into the 
Hands of the Holy God, that in His Way, and in His Time, 
the poor child might be delivered from his Insupportable 
Tyrannies, But above all, that it might be by his becom- 
ing a New Creature, if that might be obtained. The Sup- 
plications were made on these, and on other Dayes, with a 
proper spirit of Charity towards the miserable Man, and 
with all possible Resignation to the Will of God. And my 
excellent Consort often went up with me to my Library, to 
make a Consort in them. Well : I had no sooner kept my 



HIS THIRD MARRIAGE. 



■SL 



Third Day but God smote the Wretch, with a Languish- 
ing Sickness, which no body ever knew what to make of. 
He was a Strong, Lively, Hearty Young Man ; a Little 
above Thirty : But now, he Languished for Six Mo7iths j 
nor were any of the physicians tho' he successively em- 
ployed no less than five of them, able to help him. In this 
while, our Faith, our Love, our patience, and our Submis- 
sion to the Will of God, underwent many Trials more 
precious than Gold. But on the last Wednesday^ the Glo- 
rious God putt a period unto the grievous Wayes of this 
Wicked Man. — Now what remains, is for me to make a 
very holy Improvement of these Dispensations. ..." (9 
my God, I will call upon ihee, as lo?ig as I live ! " 

The gentleman whose death is thus narrated was 
named Howell. Cotton Mather was made adminis- 
trator of his estate. Resulting complications, such as 
often attend the efforts of unpractised people to 
manage money matters, made him uncomfortable for 
years. 

It was during this same month of May that Katha- 
rine Mather's consumptive symptoms became alarm- 
ing. And Katharine was very dear to her father : she 
" understood Latin, and read Hebrew fluently." ^ But 
other matters were less depressing. On the 2 2d, Cotton 
Mather writes : — 

"This Day my son Increase returns to me: much pol- 
ished, much improved, better than ever Disposed, with 
Articles of less Expense to me than I expected : And, 
which is wonderful, with an excellent Business prepared 
for him immediately to fall into. I am astonished at the 
Favours of the prayer-hearing Lord. Oh my Father, my 
Father, how good a thing it is to trust in thy P^atherly 

1 S. Mather, Life, p. 14. 
17 



^258 COTTON MATHER. 

Care ! — But Oh ! What shall I now do to fix the returned 
Child for the Service of God ! " 

A week later, discovering that Samuel had many play 
days, he had the happy thought of occupying the youth 
in turning into Latin some sentences about " the true 
and right Intent of play, and a good use of it." 

June found Katharine worse ; and Increase in evi- 
dent need of " Proper Books, to employ him in the 
Intervals of Business . . ., and furnish his mind with 
valuable Treasures." The elder Increase Mather, too, 
was ailing. 

" My parent just finishing seventy-seven," writes Cotton 
Mather, " I must now more than ever treat him, as one 
taking Wing immediately for the Heavenly World." 

Harvard College, too, was employing far too much 
'ivax^'m.^^ E thicks . . . a vile piece of paganism." But 
although his troubles were enhanced by the fact that 
Nibby fell ill of an ague, he had the satisfaction of 
accepting for her the proposals of a " hopeful young 
Gentleman, a merchant," whose intimacy with the 
Mathers had "brought him into a Business, which is 
likely to prove Superiour unto what any young Man in 
the Country pretends unto." So "that it maybe to 
his Advantage, in regard to his Better part," Cotton 
Mather immediately began to administer to him " con- 
tinual Admonitions and Inculcations of piety." And 
mid- July found the good man in a thankful mood : — 

" Except it be the Sickness of my Two Elder Daughters, 
I enjoy upon all accounts a most wonderful prosperity. 
A most wonderful prosperity ! A valuable Consort ! A 
comfortable Dwelling! A kind Neighbourhood. My son 
Increase, vastly to my mind — and Blessings without Num- 



HIS THIRD MARRIAGE. 259 

ber. Together with my own Health and Strength, strongly 
recruited. I must be solicitous to hear what the Holy One 
speaks to me in my prosperity." 

On the 14th of August, an accident happened to 
him, which Sewall briefly notes with the remark that 
he " received no hurt." But Cotton Mather took it 
seriously. 

" This day," he writes, " a Singular Thing befel me. My 
God, Help me to understand the meaning of it ! I was 
prevailed withal, to do a thing, which I very rarely do; (not 
once in years.) I rode abroad with some Gentlemen, and 
Gentlewomen, to take the Country Air, and to divert our- 
selves, at a famous Fish-pond. In the Canoe, on the pond, 
my foot slipt, and I fell overboard into the pond. Had the 
Vessel been a little further from the Shore, I must have 
been drown'd. But I soon recovered the Shore, and going 
speedily into a Warm Bed, I received no sensible Harm. 
I returned well in the Evening ; sollicitous to make all the 
Reflections of piety, on my Disaster, and on my Deliver- 
ance. But not yett able to penetrate into the Whole mean- 
ing of the occurrence. Am I quickly to go under the earth, 
as I have been under the Water ! — My Consort had her 
mind, all the former part of the day, and the day before, 
full of Uneasy Impressions, that this little Journey, would 
have mischief attending it." 

The state of things in September is expressed by his 
note for the i8th : — 

"Of my Two Elder Daughters, The one I am giving up 
to God, and preparing for the Finishing Stroke of the 
Sacrifice, which the Death of the dear creature puts me 
upon. . . . The other, I am giving away to an hopeful 
young Gentleman, who is tomorrow to become her 
Husband." 

Next day Abigail was married to Mr. Daniel Willard, 



2 6o COTTON MATHER. 

But Katharine grew steadily worse. Her temper, how- 
ever, was serene. 

" Death is become Easy," he writes, " yea, pleasant unto 
her : she rather chuses it, and has a contempt for this 
World, and a most satisfying Vision of the Heavenly 
World. It is very Strange to me ; The child feels herself 
a dying : but has a strong and bright persuasion of her own 
Recovery. I have none. I expect the Speedy approaches 
of Death upon her. — I sett apart this Day, for prayer with 
Fasting in Secret, on the behalf of the Dying Child. And 
it was a Day of Inexpressible Enjoyments unto me. I ob- 
tained pardon for all the Sins, that may have had a share in 
procuring my present Sorrows. I resigned the Child unto 
the Lord : ]\Iy Will was extinguished. I could say My 
Father^ kill my Child, if it be thy pleasure to do so. But 
yett I interceded, that if it might be so, the cup of Death 
might pass from me." 

Through October she grew gradually worse. But 
Cotton Mather was gladdened by the arrival of Gover- 
nor Shute. 

" Our New Governour," he writes on the 25th, " appears 
to have a Singular Goodness of Temper, with a Disposi- 
tion to Do Good, Reigning in Him : He also favours me 
with singular Testimonies of Regard. Oh ! Let me im- 
prove these unexpected opportunities to do good, in such a 
manner that God may have much Glory, and His people 
much Service from it." 

In November there was little new. Displeased with 
some proceedings in the House of Representatives, he 
sent for the members to visit him at his house. 

'' I would endeavour," he writes, ''their Illummation in 
the things of our peace. I would also Endeavour to re- 
duce our own Frowards from the Error of their way." 



HIS THIRD MARRIAGE. 261 

The administration of the Howell estate, too, looked 
as if it were drawing to a close ; and he determined to 
propose to his wife 

" what special Service for God and His Kingdome she will 
do, in case the Administration be well finished, and she 
find any Estate remaining, that may render her Capable of 
doing anything." 

But the most remarkable thing that happened this 
month was the merciless blotting, with a madly scrawl- 
ing pen, of two long passages of Good Devised. 

" I could never learn," he writes in the margin, " How or 
Why these Blotts were made." 

Two years later he discovered. 

Meanwhile Katharine had been steadily ailing. On 
the 1 6th of December came the end : — 

" A little before sh. A. M. My Lovely Daughter Katha- 
rine expired gloriously. The Things which her dear Sav- 
iour has done to her and for her. Afford a Wonderful Story. 
. . . Much of my Time, of Late, has been spent in Sitting 
by her with Essayes to Strengthen her in her Agonies, 
wherein God graciously assisted me. ... I have been for 
many months a dying in my feeling the dying circumstances 
of my lovely Katy. And now, this Last Night, she is actu- 
ally Dead : But how triumphantly did she go away ! " 

And he made many pious resolutions on this occa- 
sion, especially in regard to Creasy, whose conduct 
worried him again. There was another thing to worry 
him, too : — 

" The Health of my Lovely Consort, who is the greatest 
of my Temporal Blessings, is a pardcular matter of concern 
unto me." 

The remaining two months of the year passed quietly. 



262 COTTON MATHER. 

His son-in-law, Mr. Willard, gratified him by joining 
the church. And on the 3d of February he could 
write thus : — 

" My Heart is exceedingly affected with my most com- 
fortable and undeserved Enjoyments in my Domestic Cir- 
cumstances. I can scarce desire to be better off, than I 
am, upon all accounts. An amiable consort, agreeable 
Children, most accommodated Habitation, a plendf ul Table, 
The Respects of Kind Neighbours, a flourishing Auditory. 
— I am even distressed. That I may render unto the Lord, 
according to the Benefits which I have received from Him. 
Full of Thoughts, what shall I do in a way of extraor- 
dinary Thankfulness and Fruitfulness : Full of cries to 
Heaven, that I may be Directed, Quickened, Assisted unto 
a Right Behaviour." 

It was during this year 1 7 1 6 that Cotton Mather re- 
duced to writing the aflhdavit, officially certified, of how 
an apparition appeared to Anne Griffin and Ruth 
Weeden. This admirable ghost- story, very like De 
Foe's " Mrs. Veal," is printed in the Mather Papers.^ 
A note of Sewall's for the 13th of February will fitly 
close the year : — 

" Susan brings word that Mr Pemberton had a good 
night. . . . Yet afternoon am sent for to him as aproaching 
his end. When came was finishing his Will. Then I went 
in to Him : He call'd me to sit down by him, held me by 
the hand and spake pertinently to me, though had some 
difficulty to hear him. Mr. Sewall ^ pray'd fervently, and 
quickly after he expired, bolstered up in his Bed, about | 
past 3 after noon in the best Chamber. . . . My Son writ 

1 Pages 421-424. 

2 Joseph, son of the Judge, and Mr. Pemberton's colleague at 
the Old South. 



HIS THIRD MARRIAGE. 263 

a Letter to Dr. Cotton Mather to preach for him, and be- 
fore 'twas superscrib'd, he came in, which took as a Token 
for good." 

Cotton Mather's diary for 1717 ^ begins with his re- 
marks about Pemberton : — 

" Yesterday in the Afternoon, there died the elder Min- 
ister of the Old South Church ; . . . who was eight or nine 
years younger than myself. He was a Man of greater 
Abilities than many others; and, no doubt, a pious man; 
but a man of a strangely Choleric and Envious Temper, 
and one who had created unto me more Trials of my pa- 
tience, and more clogs upon my Opportunities to Do Good, 
than almost any man in the world. The younger minister 
of that church, a dear son, and One of an Excellent Spirit, 
should have preach'd this Day ; But in his Distress he flies 
unto me to take his place in the pubHc Services. I cannot 
easily reckon up the opportunities to Do Good, which I find 
concurring, in this one Invitation to public performance, on 
such an Occasion. And the Glorious Lord helped me to 
glorify Him, in the speaking of many Things to serve the 
General Interests of Religion, as well as in the Testimony 
which I gave to what was Laudable in the character of the 
Departed Minister. Praehminary to my public perform- 
ance, ... I humbled myself before the Lord, bewayling 
all the Distempers which the 111 Carriage of the Deceased 
Neighbour may at any time have thrown me into, and ad- 
miring the Divine Goodness and patience which has given 
me to outlive so many of my younger Brethren." 

The year goes on with no more notable matters than 
a good devise to " Read a Chapter of Egardus unto my 
Lovely Consort every morning before we Rise " ; and a 
troublesome accusation of idolatry, based on the fact 

* In possession of the American Antiquarian Society. 



264 COTTON MATHER. 

that he spoke civilly to a ship- cancer who had made a 
figure of St. Michael for the French provinces. 

" Our Excellent Governor," he remarks in May, " who 
has delivered the Country from a Flood of corruption, 
which was introduced by the selling of places, is to be 
encouraged." 

And on the 3d of July : — 

"This Day being the Commencement, as they call it; a 
Time of much Resort unto Cambridge, and sorrily enough 
thrown away, I chose to spend this time at home," and to 
pray that " the Colledge, which is on many accounts in a 
very Neglected and unhappy condition . . . may be re- 
stored unto better circumstances." 

But all along come notes that show domestic trouble. 
His family is much on his mind. Finally, on the 14th 
of July, he writes thus : — 

" Suppose that a child of my Singular Love and Hope 
should so fall into Sin, and be after wondrous meanes of 
Recovery so abandoned of God, . . . that there may be 
terrible cause to fear lest he prove a cast-away ; . . . what 
should be my Behaviour ? " He must guard himself against 
rebellion of spirit, adore the divine sovereignty, lament his 
own sins thus chastised, mourn for the sins of the child, and 
never give over crying unto the Lord. 

" My Son Increase ! " he writes on the 23d, '' With what 
plainness, . . . but yett with what prudence must I dis- 
pense . . . my Admonitions unto him. I take him into my 
Library; There I renew my Importunities: I obtain from 
him expressions of Repentance, and fitt Answers to the De- 
mands of piety. I pray with him there, and make him see I 
feel my Agonies for him. . . . Methinks I hear the Glorious 
One saying to me, Conceriii7ig thy Sojt I hear thee / " 

Other things troubled him, as the months went on : 
" the Venome and malice " of the '' Disaffected Rulers 



HIS THIRD MARRIAGE. 265 

of our Colledge," for one thing; his daughter Abigail 
bore his first grandchild ; his consort was ill ; Sammy's 
education puzzled him. Finally, in the middle of Oc- 
tober, he felt that he must 

"sett apart Three Days \_Beseech the Lord thrice f] to ex- 
traordinary supplications that [Increase] may not go on in 
a course of Impiety." 

The same week Sewall gives us another glimpse of 
him. Mrs. Sewall was very ill. 

" Oct. 17. I asked my wife whether twere best for me to 
go to Lecture : She said, I can't tell : so I staid at home, 
put up a Note. It being my Son's Lecture, and I absent, 
twas taken much notice of. — Oct. 19. Call'd Dr. C. Mather 
to pray, which he did excellently in the Dining Room, 
having Suggested good Thoughts to my wife before he 
went down. . . . About a quarter of an hour past four, 
my dear Wife expired. — Oct. 20. I goe to public Worship 
forenoon and Afternoon. My Son has much adoe to read 
the Note I put up, being overwhelmed with tears." 

A week later Cotton Mather preached Mrs. Sewall's 
funeral sermon. 

Meanwhile he had been filled with unhappy fore- 
bodings. A few more notes tell the story. 

" [Nov. 5.] The Evil that I greatly feared is come upon 
me. I am within these few hours astonished with an In- 
formation, that an Harlot big with a Bastard, Accuses my 
poor Son Cressy, and Lays her Belly to him. The most 
sensible Judges, upon the strictest Enquiry, beleeve the 
youth to be Innocent. But yett, oh! the Humiliation! — 
Oh ! Dreadful Case ! O sorrow beyond any that I have 
mett withal ! What shall I do now for the foolish Youth I 
What for my Afflicted and Abased Family ! My God, 
look mercifully upon me." 



266 COTTON MATHER. 

" 19. My God has not heard me. . . . My poor Son 
has made a worse Exhibition of himself unto me this day 
than I have ever yett mett withal. Oh my God, what 
shall I do ! What shall I do ! I will not yett utterly cast 
off the wretched child. But I will still follow Thee with 
supplications for what nothing but an Almighty Arm can 
accomplish." 

" Dec. 22. The aspect that some occurrences have upon 
me tells me, that I have not sufficiently repented of some 
Former Iniquities. . . . My God, help me, help me, to 
conform unto Thy Dispensations, and ly in the Dust 
before Thee ! " 

His wife was ill, too : and though Sammy was the 
best boy imaginable, his education was puzzling. Then 
his " transcendently wdcked brother-in-law " died, and 
he had to console the wddow. February found him a 
little more calm, determining to have a cold bath set 
up for fever-patients ; and, entreating of his " Discreet 
Consort " that she would plainly discover to him any 
traits of his that she would have otherwise, he had the 
satisfaction to be told of nothing. For his owm part, 
he thought himself too touchy, — 

" tho' I must be blind indeed if I do not see . . . that 
... I meet with very odd, absurd, and frow^ard usage from 
some of the people." 

But perhaps the most permanently notable of his good 
devices for the year — he made at least one every day 
— was that which he made on the 2d of January. 

"What shall I do," he asked himself that morning, "for 
the welfare of the Colledge at New-Haven ? I am inclina- 
ble to write unto a wealthy East- India merchant at London, 
who may be disposed on Several Accounts, to do for that 
Society and Colony." 



VALE COLLEGE. 267 

The College in question had been founded in 1700 : ^ 
without any endowment to speak of, it had distinguished 
itself from Harvard by maintaining, in pristine auster- 
ity, the Calvinism of the fathers. So the Mathers, and 
Sewall, and all who felt the old time passing from Mas- 
sachusetts, looked with growing fondness to New Haven. 
The letter which Cotton Mather projected on the 2d of 
January, he wrote on the i8th.^ It was to Elihu Yale. 
And among other arguments he urged was this : — 

" Sir, though you have your felicities in your family, 
which I pray God continue and multiply, yet certainly if 
what is forming at New Haven might wear the name of 
Yale College, it would be better than a name of sons 
and daughters. And your munificence might easily ob- 
tain for you such a commemoration " 

Yale thought so too : he gave a handsome gift to 
the College ; and ever since, thanks to Cotton Mather, 
the greatest nursery of New England priesthood has 
borne his name. 

'* Yale College," wrote Cotton Mather to Governor Sal- 
tonstall next June, "cannot fail of Mr. Yale's generous and 
growing bounty. I confess that it was a great and inex- 
cusable presumption in me, to make myself so far the god- 
father of the beloved infant as to propose a name for it. 
. . . [But] when the servants of God meet at your Com- 
mencement, I make no doubt, that under your Honour's 
influences and encouragements they will make it an oppor- 
tunity ... to deliberate upon projections to serve the great 
interests of education, and so of religion, . . . and not 
suffer an interview of your best men to evaporate such 
a senseless, useless, noisy impertinency as it uses to do 
with us at Cambridge." 

1 Quincy, I. 197-200; Palfrey, III. 343-345- 

2 Quincy, I. 226-229, 524-527. 



268 COTTON MATHER. 

How things were going at Cambridge appears from 
a long note of Sewall's ^ in the following November. 
At a meeting of the Overseers, to consider an enlarge- 
ment of the College buildings, Sewall arose and said 
that there was an affair of greater moment : he under- 
stood that exposition of the Scriptures in the Hall had 
not been carried on ; he asked the President '^ whether 
'twere so or no." Leverett was much displeased at 
Sewall's manner, but admitted the charge. After a hot 
discussion, Mr. Wadsworth moved that '' the president 
should as frequently as he could entertain the students 
with Expositions of the Holy Scriptures." 

" I mov'd," writes Sewall, " that as he could might be left 
out; and it was so voted. Mr. President seem'd to say 
softly, it was not till now the Business of the President to 
Expound in the Hall. I said I was glad the Overseers had 
now the Honour of declaring it to be the President's duty." 

Next day Leverett repeated his view in private to 
Sewall. 

" I said," writes the sturdy Puritan, "Twas a shame that 
a Law should be needed : meaning ex mails 7noribus bonae 
leges^^ 

In 1 718, too, another matter showed how far the 
College had strayed from the polity of the fathers. A 
graduate named Pierpont was refused the Master's de- 
gree on the ground that he had contemned and in- 
sulted the government of the College. He sued for it 
at law, with the encouragement of the Mathers. And 
Cotton Mather wrote a long letter in his behalf to Gov- 
ernor Shute. It was of no avail. The courts held that 

1 Diary, III. 202, 203. 

2 '* Good laws spring from evil practices." 



HIS THIRD MARRIAGE. 269 

the matter was wholly within the jurisdiction of the 
College authorities.^ And this is why, in 1718, Cotton 
Mather again and again bewails " the wretched condi- 
tion of the College." On the 2d of July, 

•• this being the Day of the senseless Diversion they call 
the Commencement at Cambridge, one of my special er- 
rands unto Heaven was to ask Blessings for the Colledge, 
and the Rescue of it from some wretched circumstances in 
which it is now languishing." 

And now and again he has words of counsel for the 
"good, wise, generous Governor," who, Sewall tells, 
"gave occasional balls, and went to a horse-race." 

Cotton Mather's diary for 1718^ contains good de- 
vices for every day in the year. It shows his marvel- 
lous activity and restlessness at its highest point. But 
what seems nearest to him is the condition of his 
family. His aged parent was on his mind more and 
more ; he prayed and struggled for Increase with ago- 
nizing efforts to achieve an assurance that after all the 
boy should be saved ; and now and again comes the 
single cry, " My God ! My God ! " Once he writes, 

" Things appeared unto me, as if the Holy Ghost, were 
coming forth, to take a terrible Vengeance on me for the 
sins which my life has been filled withal; yea, and as if 
my Death being at hand I am to Dy on 111 Terms with 
Heaven, and have the dreadful portion of the Hypocrites 
assigned unto me." 

There are one or two curious notes, — one showing 
his feeling toward the mother country he never saw : he 
will write " home," he plans, about Jacobite troubles. 

1 Quincy, Vol. I. Chap. XL 

'^ In possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 



270 COTTON MATHER. 

And late in the year he projects something he never 
executed, — an 

" Enchiridion of the Liberal Sciences . . . which might 
enable persons easily to attain them : and at the same time 
consecrate the whole Erudition unto the Designs of piety." 

But throughout the year one feels a growing trouble, 
and knows not quite what it is. This note, written on 
the 1 8th of November, is typical : — 

" My Family is in astonishing circumstances. O ! the 
patience, the prudence, the prayer that is called for. If it 
were not for my calling of a glorious Christ into my mind 
continually, and the visits which He graciously makes unto 
my poor, sinful, sickly soul, what, what would become of 
me ! I here leave this tesdmony to you, my children, or 
whosever Hands these papers may fall into : That a glo- 
rious Christ conversed withal, will be the life of the Soul 
that has Him dwelling in it." 

On the 1 8th of January the volume suddenly breaks 
off, with a resolution to read Thomas a Kempis, 

"a Book of piety, which tis observable, all Chrisdans of all 
comunions have approved and valued.'' 

A little volume of seven leaves, entitled, " The Con- 
clusion of the LVI. Year," ^ — preserved quite sepa- 
rately from the rest, — tells the secret. 

"2id. xim 1718. Wednesday," runs the first entry. 
" My Glorious Lord has inflicted a New and a Sharp Chas- 
tisement upon me. The consort in whom I flattered my- 
self with the View and Hope of an Uncommon Enjoyment, 
has dismally confirmed it unto me, that our Idols must 
prove our Sorrow. Now and then, in some of the former 
years I observed and suiTered grievous outbreakings of her 

J In possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 



HIS THIRD MARRIAGE. 271 

proud passions ; but I quickly overcame them with my 
victorious Love, and in the Methods of Meekness and 
Goodness. And, O my SA VI OUR, I ascribe tmto thee all 
the glory of it, and I wondrously praise thee for it : I do 
not know, that I have to this Day spoke one Impatient or 
Unbecoming Word unto her; tho' my provocations have 
been unspeakable ; and it may be few men in the World, 
would have borne them as I have done. But this last Year 
has been full of her prodigious paroxysms, which have 
made it a year of such Distresses unto me, as I have never 
seen in my Life before. When the paroxysms are gone off, 
she has treated me still with a Fondness, that it may be, few 
Wives in the World have arrived unto. But in the Return 
of them (which of late still grow more and more frequent) 
she has insulted me with such Outrages, that I am at a loss, 
which I should ascribe them to : Whether a Distraction 
which may be somewhat Hasreditary,) or to a possession; 
(whereof the symptoms have been too direful to be men- 
tioned.) In some other papers ^ I leave a more particular 
Account of these Things. But what I have here to Relate 
is : That she had expressed such a Venome, against my 
Reserved Memorials, of experiences in, and projections for, 
the Kingdom of God, as has obliged me to Lay the Memo- 
rials of this year, I thought, where she would not find them. 
It has been a year wherein I have made more Advances in 
piety, than in many former years. Perhaps, my Journey 
thro' the Wilderness just expiring, I must ride more way 
in one year now than in forty before. . . . For every Day 
I have noted, my purposes of Service for the Kingdom of 
God. For fear of what might happen, I have not one dis- 
respectful word of this proud woman, in all the papers. But 
this week, she has in her Indecent Romaging found them, 
and she not only detains them from me, but either she has 
destroy'd them, or she does protest, that I shall never see 
them any more. I have offered unto her, to blott out with 

1 These papers I have not come across. 



2 72 COTTON MATHER. 

her pen whatever she would not have to be there. But no 
Wing Entreaties of Mine can prevail upon her to Restore 
them. Only, she gives me hope of Restoring some time or 
other, the papers of the Four or Five preceding years, 
which this ungentlewomanly woman has also stolen, . , . I 
have Lived for near a year in a continual Anguish of Ex- 
pectation, that my poor Wife, by exposing her Madness, 
would bring a Ruine on my Ministry. But now it is Ex- 
posed, my Reputation is marvellously preserved among the 
people of God, and there is come such a General and Vio- 
lent Blast upon her own, as I cannot but be greatly troubled 
at. I will now go on." 

And go on he does, with good devices for every day 
until his next birth-day. But the secret was out. His 
wife was mad ; and mad she remained all the rest of 
his life. 



XIII. 

Inoculation. 

1721. 

The history of Massachusetts during the ten remain- 
ing years of Cotton Mather's Ufe concerns us Httle. In 
1720, Joseph Dudley died, in his last days weak as a 
child. Amid increasing troubles with the legislature, 
Shute remained Governor until the death of George I. ; 
but during the last years of his office he was in Eng- 
land, and Lieutenant Governor Dummer in charge of 
affairs at home. There were troubles with Jesuits and 
Indians in Maine ; there were financial difficulties, 
and disputes about official salaries ; there were squab- 
bles about the seizure of timber for the Royal Navy. 
George II. 's first Governor was William Burnet, still 
in office when Cotton Mather died. Our business now 
is to follow Cotton Mather to his end. In this chap- 
ter I shall tell of his hfe to the end of 1721. 

His diaries for 1719 and 1720 are not preserved: 
nor do I find any record of these years that shows 
him other than what we have seen. Eternally busy 
with his preaching, his writing, his reading, his scien- 
tific study, his endless projects to do what he thought 
was good ; perplexed with the growing infirmities of 
his aged parent, with the periodic madness of his wife, 
with the constant misconduct of Increase, he passed 
through his fifty-seventh and fifty- eighth years. And in 
18 



2 74 COTTON MATHER. 

1 72 1, like loyal sons of Harvard since his time, he sent 
Sam to college there, with cordial letters to a President 
of whom he heartily disapproved. 

His diary for 1721 ^ records one of the busiest and 
most useful years of his life. The daily notes of good 
devices, for all manner of things and people in all parts 
of the world, crowd the pages. But month by month 
there are notes of other matters. It may perhaps be 
best to glance at them month by month. 

In March, busy as ever, he felt his family much on 
his mind ; and one good device is worth remembering : 
new accomplishments for Cressy must be paid for, — 
" to render him a more finished gentleman [Oh ! when, 
when shall I say Christian !]" So too is a note that 
recalls the death of Howell : ^ a '' wicked party " had 
been raising trouble in the country, and Cotton Mather 
had prayed earnestly against them ; this month one of 
their leaders was stricken with apoplexy. 

"Methinks," writes the life-long foe of witchcraft, " I see 
a wonderful token for Good in this matter ; and I go on 
with my Humble Supplications to the Lord." 

Early in April, Increase was arrested for night-riot 
with " some detestable rakes in the Town." 

** What, what shall I do ! " writes his poor father. " How 
shall I glorify my Just, Wise, Dear Saviour on this deplora- 
ble occasion. And what is my Duty in relation to the In- 
corrigible prodigal." — " I must chase him out of my sight," 
he writes, a few days later, "forbid him to see me, until 
there appear sensible marks of repentance upon him. 
Nevertheless, I will entreat his Grandfather to take pains 

1 In possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 
^ See page 256. 



INOCULA TION. 2 75 

for his Recovery." — 'M will write a tremendous letter to 
my wicked son Increase," comes still later ; . . . " I will tell 
him that I will never . . . look on him. till the characters 
of a penitent are very conspicuous in him. . . . Lord, 
Tho' I am a Dog, yett cast out the Devil that has posses- 
sion of the Child." — " Ah, poor Increase ! " he writes at 
last, " Tho' I spake against him, yett I earnestly remember 
him, and my Bowels are troubled for him." 

Nor was this the only trouble now : many of his flock 
were leaving for another church, which vexed him 
sorely. He comforted himself with this reflection : — 

"I shall enjoy a bright conformity to my Saviour, . . . 
if, just before my Death, I suffer a general withdrawal of 
my hearers from me." 

But old Increase Mather was not so patient : — 

" My aged father laies to heart the withdrawal of a vain, 
proud, fooHsh people from him in his age." 

There is one charming note in May : — 

" The Time of the year arrives for the glories of Nature 
to appear in my Garden. I will take my Walks there, on 
purpose to read the glories of my Saviour in them." 

But that very week there was calamity abroad. His 
note for the 26th of May is probably the most memora- 
ble he ever made. He wrote good devices every day, 
we must remember. Hundreds of these and thousands 
came, for all we know, to nothing; but the one he 
made this day was of lasting good to humanity : — 

" G. D. The grievous Calamity of the Small-pox has now 
entered the Town. The practice of conveying and suffer- 
ing the Small-pox by Inoculation has never been used in 
America, nor indeed in the Nation. But how many lives 



276 COTTO.V MATHER. 

might be saved by it, if it were practiced. I will . . . con- 
sult our physicians, and lay the matter before them." 

The pestilence was very severe : it aroused the best 
activities of his nature. Nowhere else in his records 
does he show himself so free from morbid introspec- 
tion, so active in self- forgetful altruism, as now. And 
in June, he laid before the physicians his suggestion of 
inoculation. He had read of it, I believe, in some 
papers of the Royal Society ; and his early training as 
a physician gave him authority.-^ But the proposal was 
startling to many of the learned, and to all the vulgar. 
" It raised an horrid Clamour." 

In July, this clamour was all about him. Quarrels 
with his step-children, the Howells, whose estate he 
had tried to administer, vexed him, at the same time ; 
to meet their claims, he had even to sell some of his 
clothing. But what troubled him most was the panic 
of the plague-stricken town. 

" The cursed clamour of a people strangely and fiercely 
possessed of the Devil will probably prevent my saving the 
Lives of my Two Children from the Small-pox in the way 
of Transplantation." And he prayed, " that God would 
requite me good for all the cursing of a people that have 
Satan filling of them : and yett appear, to rescue, and in- 
crease my opportunities to Do Good, which the great ad- 
versary is now making an Hellish Assault upon." He was 
assailed with '' wild abuse ... for nothing but instructing 
our base physicians, how to save many precious lives " ; 
but at the end of the month he could write thus : " I must 

1 The American Antiquarian Society preserves a large manu- 
script of Cotton Mather's entitled the " Angel of Bethesda." 
Valueless to-day, this is said to be a good manual of contempo- 
rary medicine. 



INOCULA TION. 277 

exceedingly Rejoice in my Conformity to my Admirable 
Saviour : who was thus, and worse Requited, when he . . . 
came to save their Souls." 

So came August. His son Samuel wished to be inocu- 
lated. But if the boy should die, thought the father, 

^' the people, who have Satan remarkably filling their 
hearts, . . , will go on with infinite prejudices against me 
and my ministry. . . . His Grandfather advises, That I 
keep the whole proceeding private, and that I bring the 
Lad into this method of Safety. My God, I know not 
what to do ! " 

"It is the Hour ... of Darkness on this Despicable 
Town," he wrote later; but drew his pen through "Des- 
picable" and wrote "miserable " instead. 

In the middle of the month, he yielded to Sam's re- 
quest, and the lad was inoculated. He sickened so 
fast and so severely that his father was seized with a 
dread that perhaps, before the inoculation, the poor 
boy had already contracted the disorder. And the 
panic against inoculation rose so that the town became 
" almost ^n Hell on Earth." Nancy came down with 
the pestilence, too ; and as the month went on, both 
grew worse. Yet in all his agony, and with such ex- 
ecrations about him as even in his troublous life he had 
hardly heard before, he resolved that he would write to 
England, urging that they try inoculation there. So, 
with prayers, and faith amid every doubt, he did his 
duty : and at the very end of the month came relief. 
Opening his Bible for comfort. Cotton Mather's eye 
fell on the words, " Go thy way. Thy Son liveth." And 
that very day Sam was bled, and began to mend. 
Inoculation had triumphed. 



278 COTTON MATHER. 

In September, both Sam and Nancy were convales- 
cent ; but a new trial came. There was an interval of 
comfort; Cotton Mather preached for the bereaved 
minister of the New North Church, — the church of 
the ''swarming brethren," — thereby introducing "a 
more peaceable condition of Things in our Churches." 
But Increase began to misbehave again ; and on the 
19th, Abigail died in childbed. Cotton Mather's last 
prayer for the month is typical of his mood : — 

"That I may humble myself before the Lord," it runs, 
"for all the Sins which the Death of my dear Nibby calls 
me to repentance for. That I may obtain mercy for the 
Family that she has left behind her. That Nancy may 
have a perfect recovery; Creasy be made a New Creature; 
Liza have her life preserved in the Dangers of the Conta- 
gion; and Sammy be bless'd in his Education. That I 
may be supported and preserved in my daily Visits to the 
Sick Chambers that are so lothsome, and full of Malignity. 
That I may be directed, assisted, prospered in my whole 
Ministry. And have a particular Smile of Heaven on the 
Essays I am now sending beyond sea to serve the King- 
dom of God." 

And this troubled month he gave no less than three 
publications to the press. 

Early in October comes a different note. Three 
of his children lived with him, and a kinswoman of his 
wife's. 

" Tho' I will have my Table Talk Facetious as well as 
Instructive, . . . yett I will have the Exercise continually 
intermixed. I will sett before them some sentence of the 
Bible, and make some useful Remarks upon it." 

The pestilence was at its height, though : in one 
week 315 petitions for prayer were put up in the North 



INOCULA TION. 279 

Church; the next week, 322. And Increase Mather, 
in his sorrowful old age, was now " wholly Laid by from 
all public ser\dce." Cotton Mather struggled hard. 
The petitions for prayers fell to 180. But at the end 
of the month he wrote : — 

" In my Remarks on the Folly and Baseness contin- 
ually expressed by our Absurd and wicked people, I do not 
always preserve that meekness of Wisdom, which would 
adorn the Doctrine of God my Saviour. I will ask Wis- 
dom of God for the cure of this Distemper." 

What happened in November he shall tell for 
himself : — 

" My Kinsman, the Minister of Roxhiry^ being enter- 
tained at my House, that he might there undergo the 
Small-pox Inoculated^ and so Return to the Service of 
his Flock, which have the contagion begun among them : 
Towards Three a clock in the Night, as it grew towards 
the Morning of this Day,^ some unknown Hands, threw a 
Fired Granado into the Chamber where my kinsman lay, 
and which uses to be my Lodging-Room. The Weight of 
the Iron Ball alone, had it fallen upon his Head, would 
have been enough to have done part of the Business de- 
signed. But the Granado was charged, the upper part 
with dried powder, the lower part with Oil of Turpentine, 
and powder and what else I know not, in such a manner 
that upon going off, it must have splitt, and have probably 
killed the persons in the Room, and certainly fired the 
Chamber, and speedily Laid the House in Ashes. But, 
this Night there stood by me the Angel of GOD, whose I 
am and whom I serve ; and the Merciful providence of my 
Saviour so ordered it, that the Granado passing thro' the 
Window, had by the Iron in the middle of the Casement, 
such a Turn given to it, that in falling on the Floor, the 

1 14 November, 1721. 



28o COTTON MATHER. 

fired wild-fire in the Fuse was violently shaken out upon 
the Floor, without firing the Granado. When W\^ granado 
was taken up, there was found a paper so tied with string 
about the fuse that it might out-hve the breaking of the 
shell, — which had these words in it: — Cotton Mather^ 
you Dog; Dam yo7i : PI enoculate you with this, with a 
pox to you.'''' 

Cotton Mather had read Foxe's Martyrs all his life. 
This attack was such as had been made on the saints 
in Queen Mary's days, and older still ; he was almost 
a martyr. 

" I would much rather Dy for my Conformity to the 
Blessed Jesus," he wrote, "in Essays to save the Lives 
of Men from the Destroyer, than for some Truths, tho' 
precious ones, to which many Martyrs testified formerly 
in the Flames of Smithfield." 

And he closed the month by publishing far and 
wide accounts of inoculation, 

"by Which means, I hope, some hundreds of thousands of 
lives may in a little while come to be preserved." 

December brought lesser troubles. An enemy, to 
deride him, named a troublesome slave " Cotton 
Mather"; but he placed his hope in heaven, and 
prayed especially for '' the welfare of the unknown per- 
son, who sought my Death by the fired Granado." 
And this month comes almost the last glimpse we have 
of the riotous young Increase : — 

" My son Increase, by a violent and passionate Resent- 
ment of an Indignity, which a wicked Fellow offered unto 
me, has exposed himself to much Danger, and me also to 
no little Trouble. I must employ this occasion as much 
to his Advantage, especially in regard to piety, as I can." 



INOCULA TION. 2 8 1 

The month ended with reaction : — 

" By a dark and a faint Cloud striking over my Mind, I 
begin to feel some Hazards, lest my Troubles, whereof I 
have a greater share than any Minister in the Countrey, 
grow too hard for me, and unfit me and unhinge me for 
my Services." 

And in January he told an assembly of ministers that 
his efforts to do good had brought obloquy on him and 
destroyed his usefulness. Hereafter he would follow 
good schemes, not propose them. 

"An Ingenious person in the company, Mr. Wm. Cooper, 
made the first and a quick Reply, ... in these Words, 
/ hope the Devil don't hear you, Syry 

The last note for the year fitly closes the record : — 

"The year being so finished, what can I do better than 
seriously peruse the memorials of it, and make the Reflec- 
tions of piety that may be proper upon them." 



XIV. 

The Death of Increase Mather. 

1722-1723. 

• 

In the year 1722, a startling thing happened at Yale 
College. The Rev. Timothy Cutler, who had been a 
successful President there for several years, announced 
his conversion to the Church of England. He was 
relieved of his office, and proceeded to England : 
whence by and by he came back as an Episcopal 
clergyman to Boston. 

Whether this fact had anything to do with what went 
on at Harvard I cannot say. In the time that had 
intervened since Leverett had been made President, the 
course of things there had been wholly in the direction 
of the liberalism, which in growing and changing forms 
has constantly characterized the older College. As we 
have seen, the sympathy of whoever held faithfully to 
the old traditions of New England had been more and 
more directed to Yale. Quincy^ shows good reason 
for supposing that Cotton Mather, without due open- 
ness, tried hard to divert thither at least a part of the 
benefactions of Thomas Hollis. This gentleman, a 
Baptist merchant of London, was in his time the most 
generous friend Harvard College had ever had. And 
the effort which the Orthodox clergy of Massachusetts 

1 Vol. I. Chapter XII. 



DEATH OF INCREASE MATHER. 283 

made to confine the Professorship of Divinity that HoUis 
founded to their own creed — a creed distinctly differ- 
ent from his — is among the least admirable features 
of their hopeless struggle to maintain priestly authority 
in a state committed to constantly more advanced 
Protestantism. 

The passage I cited from Sewall,^ describing his con- 
troversy with Leverett in the Board of Overseers, re- 
lates one incident of a controversy that was going on 
at Harvard. Quincy^ tells the story in detail. The 
Corporation consisted chiefly of men in sympathy with 
Leverett ; Colman, for example, was now a Fellow. 
Two tutors, apparently of more conservative temper, 
advanced a claim to seats in the Corporation. A fierce 
dispute broke out, of which the details need not con- 
cern us. One of its features, however, was an official 
inquiry into the actual state of the College, educa- 
tional, religious, and moral. This was in progress 
throughout the year 1723 : and Cotton Mather eagerly 
urged it on. His suggestions on points to be inquired 
into, Quincy prints in full. It seems possible that the 
state of the " beloved infant " Yale led him to hope for 
a return of grace to the mother Harvard. 

In the beginning of this paper is a phrase which 
refers to the event of this year which meant most to 
Cotton Mather : — 

"The performances of a deceased person, and with what 
industry and fidelity the churches of New England were 
served in them, 'tis too late to inquire into." 

The deceased person was Increase Mather. The 
old man had died on the 23d of August, 1723. 

1 See page 26S. 2 Vol. I. Chapter XIII. 



284 ^ COTTON MATHER. 

Cotton Mather gives a long account of his father's 
latter days ; ^ of the constancy and method of his devo- 
tions and studies; of his benign charity, — a trait of 
which I find little trace elsewhere ; of the grave civility 
of his carriage in all departments of life. His faults 
the pious son passes lightly : were it not for Sewall's 
diary, and the frequent allusions to " my aged parent " 
in Cotton Mather's own, we should not have the pain- 
ful picture I can dimly see of the austere Puritan's sad 
old age. He had given the best energies of a Hfe that 
had been among the most laborious of his time, to the 
Colony and the Province and the churches of Massa- 
chusetts. He had won for the people the Charter 
under which they lived less fettered, I believe, than any 
other colonists in the world. And his reward had been 
neglect. Political power, Harvard College, his very 
congregation, had one after the other been withdrawn 
from him. And plagued with the pains of pedantic 
old age, he had diffused about his last years, I fear, an 
atmosphere free from moral or spiritual exhilaration. 
The greatest of his trials, the most mysterious of all the 
dispensations he had to bear, was the disappointment 
of the greatest particular faith of his life. Again and 
again, wrestling with the Lord, he had been assured 
that he should once more serve God in England. His 
son had shared his faith and his assurances. But they 
came to nothing. The College fell back to the old 
charter that fatally failed to secure it to the faith of 
the fathers. And what God meant, neither of the 
Mathers could ever guess. There is pathos in Cotton 
Mather's last note about the matter : after all, was not 

1 Parentator, XXXI., XXXII. 



DEATH OF INCREASE MATHER. 285 

the faith perhaps fulfilled when, in 17 15, an assembly 
of ministers asked Increase Mather to bear a formal 
address of congratulation to George I.? 

A few of his last speeches Cotton Mather preserves. 
Of Boston he said, 

"There is yet a number of Godly People in the town; 
they may be brought low, But the Town shall be yet pre- 
served": of the times in general, "There will be no set- 
tled Good Times, I suppose, till the second coming of the 
Lord." 

It was he who drew up a loyal address for the Min- 
isters of Boston to King George, delivered from some 
Jacobite plot. And in the last year of his life he wrote 
a solemn paper, briefly asserting the old principles of 
New England, to maintain which the Colony and the 
College had been planted ; and earnestly charging 
posterity with the duty of preserving them. 

In his last days, grievously plagued with the stone, 
his spirit, like his father's before him, sank low. 

" In a deep Abyss of Humility, there was utterly Absorb'd 
with him all Sense of his ever having done atty good at all 
in the World." 

And he prayed, and begged those about him unceas- 
ingly to pray for the free grace of Christ. And hearing 
that Thomas Hollis had written to ask if he were yet in 
the land of the living, he bade his son write back : — 

" No, Tell him I am going to it ; This Poor World is 
the Land of the Dying." 

Late in July Sewall wrote thus : — 

" Fast at the Old North. As I went along towards 
Cambridge-Court, I called at the old Doctor's who was 
agonizing and Crying out, Pity me ! Pity me ! I told him 



286 COTTON MATHER. 

God pity'd him, to which he assented and seemed pacify'd. 
He prayed God to be with me."^ 

He lived three weeks longer. This is his son's 
account of his end : — 

" At last, he began to fall into the Torments of the 
Wheel broken at the Cistern : Which yet became not Intol- 
erable, and forced no Ejaculation from him till about Three 
Weeks before he Died. Under these, about Three Days 
before his Expiration, coming out of a Dark Minute, he 
said, // is now Revealed from Heaven to me^ That I shall 
quickly^ quickly ^ quickly be fetched away to Heaven, and 
that I shall Dy in the A ri7is of my Son. After this, he kept 
very much calling for me ; till Friday, \}:\^ Twenty-Third oi 
August, 1723, in the Morning perceiving the Last Agonies 
now come upon him, I did what I could after my poor man- 
ner, that he might be Strengthened by such Quickening 
Words as the Lively Oracles of our God have provided for 
such Occasions. As it grew towards Noon, I said unto 
him, Syr, the Messe7iger is now come to tell you, This Day 
thou shalt be in Paradise. Do you Believe it, Syr, and Re- 
joice i?i the Views and Hopes of it? He Replied, / do/ 
I do / I do ! — And upon these Words he Dyed in my 
Arms.'' 

Posterity has inclined to deem him a cunning schem- 
er, justly disappointed in such ambition as to-day not 
a few among us attribute to the priesthood of Rome. 
That he earnestly longed to see the temporal power of 
America at the feet of the spiritual, no man can doubt ; 
nor yet that he saw in himself the man who should by 
right stand at the head of the spiritual power of his 
time and country. And there will always be men, and 
many, who cannot believe that such views can be held 
for any other reason than vulgar longing for human 
1 Diary, III. 325. 



DEATH OF INCREASE MATHER. 287 

power. But whoever has followed the history of Har- 
vard College, through Unitarianism, to that more shad- 
owy heresy still which calls itself unsectarian religion, — 
even though he rejoice, as I do, in the unfettered spirit- 
ual freedom of the greatest stronghold of American 
Protestantism, — must know that the grim old man 
read the future right. If the faith from which he 
never swerved be true, then assuredly we of the later 
times are lost. And those who can train themselves 
to that sympathy without which no man can under- 
stand his fellows will not forget, when they sit to 
judge the greatest of the native Puritans, that not 
one of his efforts to preserve and strengthen his 
earthly authority was not also an effort to make their 
lives, and all the lives still to come, lives which should 
tread in the paths of salvation. 

So, after nearly eighty-four busy, troubled years, he 
came to his peace. And so the son, who had never 
faltered in devotion, who for well on to forty years had 
shared every hope and grief with an affection as broth- 
erly as it was filial, was left alone, to struggle with a 
world which all his life had been pressing onward from 
the station where his feet were planted. With a mad 
wife, with but four of his fifteen children left him, 
with his eldest son — and to the end his dearest — 
straying further and further towards perdition, with the 
New England churches ever straying further and further 
from the holy traditions they were founded to preserve. 
Cotton Mather was left alone. 



XV. 

The Last Diary of Cotton Mather. 
1724. 

The last of Cotton Mather's diaries preserved is that 
for 1724.^ The daily notes of good devices continue 
until November, when a sharp fit of illness broke them 
off. And when he grew better, and began to write 
once more, in a style whose incoherence shows how his 
troubles had shaken him at last, his first note tells that 
he will record his good devices no more ; in the little 
time left him on earth, there are other things that call 
for every moment. 

It was a troubled year, this 1724. Yet his first note 
is not a troubled one. On his birthday he held a fast 
as ecstatic as any he had known ; and among his 
works for the day was the long Latin epitaph with 
which he ended the life of his father, — the book from 
which my picture of the old man has chiefly been 
drawn, and the book which shows how firmly, even in 
his closing years. Cotton Mather still held the faith 
which had governed his whole life. And a little later 
he had a satisfaction : forty years before. Increase 
Mather had preached against suicide a sermon insti- 
gated by the act of one Taylor, father of the Lieutenant 
Governor to be, who had hanged himself with a snafile- 

1 In possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 



HIS LAST DIARY. 289 

bridle. Another notable suicide now occurring, Sewall 
sent to Cotton Mather, asking whether the sermon were 
preserved. Cotton Mather found it almost at once : 
Sewall had it published.^ And so Increase Mather, 
though dead, still spoke to the people of New England.'-^ 
But there were many things to vex Cotton Mather, too : 
Increase was gone to sea ; the troubles about the ad- 
ministration of Howell's estate went so far that writs 
against Mather were issued ; ^ and in his house was a 
niece of his wife, — 

" a very wicked Creature, and not only deaf to all proposals 
of piety, but also a monstrous Liar, and a very mischievous 
person, and a Sower of Discord, and a Monster of Ingrati- 
tude." 

Nor did discord need to be sown in the unhappy 
house : Mrs. Mather's paroxysms were worse than ever. 
Again and again this year come Latin notes, telling 
under the thin veil of that learned tongue what the 
horrors of his last marriage were. 

Another matter which troubled him much he men- 
tions thus : — 

" I hear of strong Machinations and Expectations among 
the wicked Church of England ]\Ien, to gett our Colledge 
into their hands ; which will be a most compendious way 
to bring Quick Ruine on our Churches. I would apply my- 
self with all proper Awakenings to the men at Helm on this 
Occasion."' And next day he would '' sollicit for Days of 
prayer ... in the CoUedge-Hall, on the Occasion of the 
condition . . . it is . . . exposed unto." 

1 Sewall's Diary, III. 331, 332, - See page 26. 

^ The two Howells, who made all his trouble, were drowned, 
while skating at the foot of Boston Common, Jan. 8, 1727-8. 
Sewall's Letter-Book, II. 307. 

19 



29© COTTON MATHER. 

The state of aifairs was this. The Rev. Timothy 
Cutler, the converted President of Yale, had come 
from England to Boston, as Episcopal Rector of Christ 
Church, — the church from which fifty years later, by a 
curious irony of fate, the lantern was shown that sent 
Paul Revere galloping to Lexington and Concord. 
One Mr. Myles was Rector of King's Chapel, the of- 
ficial place of worship of the royal Governor. As 
<' ministers of Boston," these gentlemen claimed seats 
in the Board of Overseers of Harvard College ; ^ and 
though their claim was never allowed, it was urged 
until after Cotton Mather was dead. And it had to 
be fought hard. 

It was this, among other things, which led Cotton 
Mather to that day of meditation of which Upham has 
pubhshed the greater part of the record.^ He asked 
himself question after question about his earthly state, 
and gave answers ; of which this is an example : — 

" What has a gracious God given me to do \w good offices 
wherever I could find opportunities for the doing of them ? 
I for ever entertained them with alacrity. . . . And yet I 
see no man for whom all are so loth to do good offices. . . . 
Often have I said, What would I give if there were any one 
man in the world to do for me what I am willing to do for 
every man ! " 

But Upham thought irrelevant and not worth quot- 
ing the close of these meditations. 

" I have a clear and strong persuasion of a Future State. 
... I do most freely . . . consent unto the condition of a 
crucified man, . . . without any prospect of any Outgate, 

1 Quincy, Vol. I. Chapter XVII. 

2 Salem Witchcraft, II. 503, seq. 



HIS LAST DIARY. 291 

but at and by the Dying Hour. Yea, Secondly, I have al- 
ready received an abundant Recompense of Christ. ... If 
I never had any other compensation for my Troubles, I 
have had so much, that I need not ask for any more." 

Which words and others like them make the passage 
seem to me other than to Upham : he finds in it a 
confession of selfish wickedness which deliberately 
sacrificed human life in the witchcraft trials, two and 
thirty years before. 

What Cotton Mather had to bear from his wife, these 
two notes tell : — 

August 13. " This night my unaccountable Consort, had 
a prodigious return of her pangs upon her. . . . After a 
thousand unrepeatable Invectives, compelling me to Rise 
at Midnight, and retire to my Study that I might there pour 
out my Soul before the Lord ; she also gott up in a horrid 
Rage, protesting that she would never Live or Stay with 
me ; and calling up her wicked Niece and Maid, she went 
over to a Neighbour's House for a Lodging. ... I, with 
my Son Samuel^ and my daughter Hajinah., retired up to 
my Library, where we together . . . poured out our Sup- 
plications. Towards the morning, I went unto my Bed, 
and enjoy'd some Repose. . . . What was pretended as 
the Introduction to the present, was. That, forsooth, for a 
Day or two, my Looks and Words were not so very kind as 
they had been." 

August 23. " In the Evening, . . . my poor Wife, re- 
turning to a Right Mind, came to me in my Study, entreat- 
ing that there might be Eternal Oblivion of every thing 
that had been out of point; . . . and that for the . . . 
further obtaining of this Felicity, I would now join with 
her in pouring out Supplications to the Lord. ... I did 
accordingly. And the Tokens of the greatest Inamoration 
on her part ensued upon it." 



292 COTTON MATHER. 

Meanwhile another trial was in progress. On the 
3d of May, John Leverett, President of Harvard Col- 
lege, was found dead in his bed. On the 6th, he was 
buried, and Cotton Mather was one of his bearers. 
Next day, Mather writes : — 

" The sudden death of that unhappy man who sustained 
the place of president in our colledge, will open a Door for 
my doing of Singular Services to the Best of Interests. 
Indeed his being within a year of the same Age with my- 
self loudly calls upon me to live in a daily expectation of 
my own call from hence. ... I do not know that the care 
of the colledge will be now cast upon me : tho' I am told, 
it is what is most generally wished for. If it should, I 
shall be in abundance of Distress about it. But if it should 
not, I may do many things for the good of the colledge, 
more quietly and more hopefully than formerly. . . . Why 
may I not write unto the tutors . . ., and Sollicit . . . 
That they would exert their powers to make the Students, 
become indeed what they are called, and spend . . . their 
Time well; and therefore not content themselves with the 
daily Recitations (the matter of which also, ought to be fur- 
ther considered) but assign them suitable Books to read, 
and see that they Read them. That they encourage So- 
dalities among them ; to meet every week for the Com- 
munications of their Acquisitions to one another. That 
they Countenance Industry, with distinguished Rewards 
... to the Meritorious. That they bring up the use of the 
Latin Tongue in Conversation among the Scholars. That 
above all things, they do what may be done for the Anima- 
tion ... of PIETY among the young men : . . . cast a kind 
Aspect on those who Associate for Devotions ; and . . . 
establish them in the Faith and Order of the Gospel^ in 
which the Churches of New England have their Beauty 
and their Safety." 

August 12. "I am now informed that the Six Men who 



HIS LAST DIARY. 293 

call themselves the Corporation of the Colledge mett, and 
contrary to the Epidemical Expectation of the Countrey, 
chose a modest young man, of whose piety (and little else) 
every one gives a laudable character. I always foretold 
these Two Things of the Corporation: First, That if it 
were possible for them to steer clear of me, they will do 
so. Secondly, That if it be possible for them to act 
Foolishly, they will do so. . . . It proves accordingly. 
Now, tho' the senseless Management of these men 
threatens little short of a Dissipation to the Colledge, 
yett I have personally unspeakably to admire the com- 
passion of Heaven to me on this occasion. Tho' I have 
been a Man of Sorrows and acquainted with Griefs, yett 
none of the least Exercises I have met withal, was the 
Dread of what the Generality of sober people . . . desired : 
the Care of the Colledge. . . . I had a Dismal Apprehension 
of the Distresses, which a call to Cambridge would bring 
upon me. . . . But the Sleight and the Spite of my Six 
Friends, has produced for me an Eternal Deliverance. I 
doubt, I have expressed myself with a httle too much Alac- 
rity on this Occasion. Lord, help me to a wise Behaviour ! " 
Next day he wrote : " G. D. Hasten, Hasten, O Slothful 
Mather, in dispatching thy Treatise of Advice to the Can- 
didates of the Ministry. Thou mayest thereby do more 
Good, than Twenty presidents of Colledges.'' 

That very night was the one when his wife left his 
house. 

A month later, he had another meditation about the 
College : Had the care of it come to him, it might have 
worried him to death ; and who knows but the Lord, 
designing shortly to call him from earth, purposely deliv- 
ered the College from a fresh inconvenience? Again, 
though as President he might have served God, the 
" Grace which I have already received in that kind, espe- 
cially considering my prodigious unworthiness, may well 



2 94 COTTON MATHER. 

be sufficient for me. . . . Finally, The preferring of a 
Child before me as my Superiour in Erudition, or in 
Capacity ... to manage the Government of an Academy, 
or in piety and Gravity, This is what ... it would be a 
Crime in me to be disturbed at." 

The ''Child " in question was Joseph Sewall, son of 
the Judge, and minister of the Old South Church. He 
declined the office. In November the Corporation 
met again. 

" The Corporation of our Miserable Colledge," wrote 
Cotton Mather, "do again (upon a Fresh Opportunity) 
treat me with their accustomed Judgment and Malignity 
But Oh ! may I take pleasure in the Opportunity I have 
to glorify my God and Saviour." 

The choice of the Corporation fell on Colman, who 
also declined. It was not until June, 1725, that a 
President was finally found : it was Benjamin Wads- 
worth, who held office till after Cotton Mather died. 

Meanwhile, in August, just when his wife was at her 
w^orst, had come a harder blow still. On the 20th 
he writes : — 

" While I am this morning, about projecting of Services 
for the Kingdom of God ... I have sad Advice of His 
going on to pull down mine [House], with dreadful Dis- 
pensations. . . . My son hicrease is Lost, is Dead, is 
Gone. The Ship wherein he was bound from Barbadoes 
to St. Peter's, had been out five Months . . . ; and some 
singular circumstances of the Vessel also . . . confirm the 
Apprehension that it is perished in the Sea. Ah ! my Son 
Increase ! My Son, My Son ! My Head is Warm, and 
my Eyes are a Fountain of Tears. — I am overwhelmed ! — 
And this at a Time when the Domestic Inhumanities and 
Diabolisms which I am treated withal, are so Insupport- 



HIS LAST DIARY. 295 

able ! — Oh my God, I am oppressed : undertake for me. — 
But the Soul of the Child ! — If the purposes which he left 
in my Hands were Sincere, and His Heart went with his 
pen, — All is well ! — Would not my God not have me to 
hope so ? — My Saviour yett affords me this Light in my 
Darkness, that He enables me, to offer up all the Sacrifices 
He calls me to." 

In September came a rumour that, after all, the ship 
in which Increase sailed was safe ; but a day or two 
later comes this note : — 

" The Good News of poor Creasy's being Rescued and 
Releeved from Death is all come to nothing: Twas another 
Vessel. O my Father^ Thy Will be done.^'' 

Later still comes a supplication "with a special Regard 
unto the sad case of my son Increase; that I may have 
Light arise in Darkness to me under it ; . . . and that 
the Discourse^ which it has awakened me to prepare for 
the pubhc may be published and prospered." 

Late in November, as I have said, Cotton Mather 
fell very ill. For five weeks he was unable to make 
entries in his diary. As I have said, those he made 
when he grew better show him broken in health and 
mind as never before. I will cite but one : it is the last ; 
and one, I think, with which he would have chosen to 
])id us farewell. 

"February 7. 1724-5. Lord's-Day. When I sitt alone 
in my Languishments, unable to Write or to Read, I often 
compose Little Hymns agreeable unto my present circum- 
stances, and Sing them unto the Lord. Vast numbers have 
I had of these, which are immediately all Forgotten. But 
tho' none of them have been hitherto recorded, I will here 
insert one of them; inasmuch as I design to use it again, 
and often upon occasion. Having found my Mind for 



296 COTTON MATHER. 

some time without such precious and Impressive Thoughts 
of God my Saviour, as are the Life of my Spirit, I thus 
mourn'd and Sung unto the Lord : — 

" O glorious Christ of God ! I Live 
In Views of Thee Alone. 
Life to my gasping Soul, Oh ! Give ! 
Shine Thou, or I 'm undone. 

" I cannot Live, my God, if Thou 
Enliven'st not my Faith ! 
I'm Dead ; I 'm Lost ; Oh ! Save me now 
From a Lamented Death. 

" For the Return of my Health I added: 

" My glorious Healer now Restore 
My Health, and make me whole. 
But this is what I most implore : 
Oh, For an Healed Soul." 






I 



XVI. 

The Last Days of Cotton Mather. 

1724-1728. 

In this year, 1724, Cotton Mather's youngest surviv- 
ing daughter, EHzabeth, had married one Edward 
Cooper. In this year, too, Benjamin FrankHn saw him 
for the last time. In Franklin's /Autobiography, the 
prince of self-made Yankees tells that one of the books 
that most influenced his youth was Cotton Mather's 
"Essays to Do Good," ^ — a work in which Mather 
insisted on a point that was always dear to him, the 
importance of combined, co-operative effort. In 1724, 
Franklin, better dressed than usual, came home for a 
few weeks from his first expedition to Philadelphia. 
Among other visits, the young man paid one to Cotton 
Mather, in the study where a placard bearing the 
words "Be Brief" warned visitors that they had to do 
with the busiest of men. When Franklin took leave, 
Mather showed him out through a dark passage, and, 
as the youth was walking ahead, suddenly called out, 
" Stoop ! " Not understanding, Franklin took an- 
other step and bumped his head against a projecting 
beam. Whereupon Mather warned him that, through- 
out life, he would find judicious stooping a great means 
of avoiding trouble. So they parted. Years after- 

1 See Sibley, III. 102, 103. The book was published in 17 10. 



298 COTTON MATHER. 

wards Franklin wrote Samuel Mather that he had 
never forgotten the useful counsel. 

For the remaining three years of Cotton Mather's hfe, 
I find no record that shows him other than we have seen 
him. Between the beginning of 1725 and the end of 
1728, Sibley shows that no less than fifty of his pubU- 
cations appeared, — sermons, books of good counsel, 
and so on. In general, one may say that his published 
work was historical, biographical, expository, and hor- 
tatory : its chief features are lives of good people, 
instructions as to how good may be done, explanations 
of Scripture and of various points of godliness, and 
such scientific instruction as appeared in his writings 
about inoculation. Considering how much he wrote 
and how actively he busied himself with public affairs, 
it is amazing that he left behind so little controversial 
writing. The fact is, I take it, that he was from the 
beginning so convinced of the essential authority of 
the clergy, that, except under very great provocation, 
argument of any kind seemed needless in one of his 
profession. 

In August, 1726, his daughter Elizabeth died, leav- 
ing children. Of his own fifteen children only Samuel 
and Hannah survived him. 

In December, 1727, he fell ill.^ 

" My Last Enemy is come," he said, " I would say my 
Last Frie?td.^' 

He lay ill five or six weeks. On Thursday, February 
8th, he began to suffer with 

" an hard Cough and a suffocating Asthma with a Fever; 
but he felt no great Pain ; he had the sweet Cojnposure 

I S. Mather, Life, VII. 3, 4. 



HIS LAST DA YS. 299 

and easy Departure^ for which he had entreated so often 
diudi fervently the sovereign Disposer of all Things." 

On Sunday, writes Samuel Mather, 

"I asked him what Sentence or Word . . . He would 
have 7ne think on constantly^ for I ever desired to have him 
before me and hear him speaking to me. He said, ' Re- 
member only that one word Fructuosics.' ^ " 

On Tuesday, February 13th, 1728, — the day after 
his sixty-fifth birthday, — he died. 

Sewall describes the last scene of all : — 

"Monday, Febr. 19. Dr. Cotton Mather is intombed: 
Bearers, The Rev'd. Mr. Colman, Mr. Thacher ; Mr. 
Sewall, Prince; Mr. Webb, Cooper. The Church went 
before the Corps. First, the Rev'd Mr. Gee ^ in Mourning 
alone, then 3 Deacons, then Capt. Hutchinson, Adam 
Winthrop esqr. Col. Hutchinson — Went up Hull street. 
I went in a Coach. All the Council had gloves; I had a 
pair. It seems when the Mourners return'd to the House, 
Mr. Walter said, My Bror. had better Bearers; Mr. Prince 
answer'd, They bore the better part." 

1 Fruitful. 

^ Cotton Mather's colleague at the North Church. 



I 



XVII. 

Cotton Mather, the Puritan Priest. 

Before Cotton Mather's tomb was fairly closed, then, 
men who had known him best were whispering among 
themselves other than good things concerning the dead. 
Posterity has held them right. A subtle priest, self- 
seeking, vain, arrogant, inconsistent, mischievous in his 
eternal business, many have called him : even if honest, 
dreadfully deluded and grotesquely lacking in judgment, 
is what those mostly say who say the best. And if we 
had only public records to guide us, I should be dis- 
posed to assent. 

The son of Increase Mather, the grandson of John 
Cotton and of Richard MatTier, sprung of a race of 
chosen vessels of the Lord, himself a chosen vessel be- 
fore his boyhood was fairly closed, intoxicated with such 
adulation as Urian Oakes spoke when, the youngest of 
Harvard graduates, he took his degree, he began his half- 
century of earthly work. Full of the traditions of the 
fathers, he pressed on, divinely authorized to lead the 
people of God in the path of salvation : whoever would 
not follow was godless. Then he saw his father's great 
work in England; and meanwhile did great work at 
home. He saw the tyranny of Andros fall : his prayers 
were answered. He saw Phipps come with the new 
Charter : New England was saved. Now he might 



THE PURITAN PRIEST. 301 

lead on more confidently still. And he plunged into 
the horrors of witchcraft. And he saw theocracy fall 
with poor Sir William Phipps. And he saw Harvard 
College lost to the cause of the fathers. And he saw 
the very churches of Boston preaching new doctrines, 
full of delusion. For five and thirty years he saw the 
clergy of New England started on the course in which 
they still travel : from a position where the influence of 
the church was greater than anywhere else in the world, 
to one where the influence of the church has become 
almost imperceptible. And he fought against fate with 
every weapon he could clutch ; and he believed his own 
advancement was what God needed to restore His king- 
dom ; and some of the blows he struck — and for aught 
I know many of them — may have been foul ones. 

But before we can judge him aright, we must strive 
to see him as he saw himself. This is what I have 
tried to do. I have told his story perhaps too much 
in his own words. By no other means could I show 
so simply what seems to me the truth : that with a 
depth of human nature which makes him above most 
men who have lived a brother man to all of us, he never 
ceased striving, amid endless stumblings and errors, to 
do his duty. 

It was his lot to possess a mind and a temperament 
more restlessly active than most men ever know. With 
this nature, it was his lot to live all his life in a petty 
provincial town, further removed from the great current 
of contemporary life than any spot to-day in the civil- 
ized world. And this he never realized ; nor have any 
of those reaHzed who have sat to judge him. His grand- 
fathers, and the other founders of New England, came 



302 COTTON MATHER. 

from the midst of the seething England which was soon 
to dethrone the Stuarts, full of the passion of a contest 
that had been to every one of them the greatest of 
earthly realities. His father's life had brought the 
elder man face to face with kings and bishops : In- 
crease Mather had fought hard to preserve and to per- 
petuate a Puritanism whose pristine freshness was still 
within his own memory. But when Cotton Mather's 
time came, Puritanism — like Anglicanism itself — was 
already not the great reality it had once been : it had 
become a tradition. The world travels faster nowadays. 
The Civil War is already such a tradition to us. 

This great tradition of Puritanism he fought so pas- 
sionately to defend had in it the seeds of a grim, un- 
truthful formalism, which has made it seem to many 
men of later times a gloomy delusion, fruitful only of 
limitation and of cant. Those who see in it only or 
chiefly this, forget what even to Cotton Mather himself 
was its greatest truth. Few human philosophies have 
been more essentially ideal ; few systems formulated by 
men have so strenuously kept before the minds of those 
who accept them the transitory unreality of those things 
which human beings can perceive, the eternal and infi- 
nite reality of the Divine universe that lies beyond hu- 
man ken. Once learn this, and nothing on this earth 
is so great as to deserve a care, when we think of the 
infinite realities beyond ; nor anything on this earth so 
mean as not to be a manifestation of divine truth. At 
onQe contemptible and reverend, this earthly life of 
ours is but the fragment of an instant in the timeless 
eternities of God. But to the Puritans, it was an in- 
stant in which the infinite mercy of God, with free 



THE PURITAN PRIEST. 303 

grace mitigating His infinite justice, gave every living 
man the chance and the hope of finding in himself the 
signs of eternal salvation. It is not every man who can 
rise to such heights of idealism as this : whoever cannot 
or will not so rise, whoever cannot feel beneath the 
austere pettiness of Puritanism the passionate enthusi- 
asm that made things unseen — Hell and Heaven, the 
Devil, and the Angels, and God — greater realities than 
anything this side of eternity, can never even guess what 
Puritanism meant. 

On its earthly side, however, Puritanism had a trait 
which has been more generally recognized, though not, 
perhaps, more fully understood. In its origin it was 
Protestant. It began, and it gained earthly strength, in 
a passionate revolt of human thought from those phases 
of ecclesiastical tradition which human experience had 
proved false and wicked. God's word contains God's 
truth, the first Protestants cried ; we will read it for our- 
selves, none but God shall be our guide. So, Bible in 
hand, they led the way for who would follow ; and when 
they were gone far enough to muster their forces, they 
would have cried halt. But what authority had they to 
stop the progress they had urged? God's world con- 
tains God's truth, cried those of their followers whose 
spirit came nearest to that of the leaders : let us read it 
there, and read it each for himself ; none but God shall 
be our guide. And those who press ever onward, seek- 
ing God's truth each for himself, are the Protestants of 
to-day. Protestantism can have no priesthood. 

This truth Cotton Mather never guessed. To this 
day honest Protestant Christians are blind to it. Nor 
did he guess, either, some other truths which modern 



304 CO TTON MA THER. 

Protestant Christianity equally fails to recognize. The 
priestly office, let it derive its authority from Rome or 
Canterbury, Geneva or Utah, demands in those who 
exercise it even most fervently a trait which in its most 
obvious form the priests are the first to condemn, — 
histrionic insincerity. Placed before men as an accred- 
ited spiritual leader, the priest — whatever his mood or 
his character — must conduct himself, at least in his 
public functions, as if he were what no human being 
ever was or can be, — wholly given up to the service of 
God. And the adulation of the worshippers who see 
in him an ever present minister of God strengthens him 
year by year in the power in which applause strength- 
ens the actor : the power of seeming at will to be what 
in the depths of his heart he is not. To gain this 
power, to strengthen it, is part of the priest's duty. 
And there is no way of strengthening it so certain as 
the way Cotton Mather took, like the saints of Rome 
before him. Day after day, week after week, month 
after month, year after year, he cast himself in the dust 
before the Lord ; he strained his eyes for a fleeting 
gHmpse of the robes and crowns of God's angels, his 
ears for the faintest echo of their celestial music. Pure 
in motive, noble in purpose, his whole life was one 
unending effort to strengthen in himself that phase of 
human nature whose inner token is a riot of mystical 
emotion, whose outward signs are unwitting manifesta- 
tions of unfettered credulity and unmeant fraud. 

Yet it is not as a sly and superstitious priest that I 
remember him to-day : any more than I think that sly- 
ness and superstition to-diy make up the character of a 
Christian minister. In the first place, the passionate 



THE PURITAN PRIEST. 305 

idealism to which he held with all his heart — like 
honest priests since the world began — coloured, and 
glorified, and made divine, even the meanest things in 
the petty earthly life he knew. A squatting dog brought 
him a message straight from the throne of God. In 
the second place, the life he lived — with all its gro- 
tesque pettiness — was the life which had in it the seeds 
of that great continental life in which Hes the chief hope 
of the modern world. To understand the America of 
to-day, we must know the New England of the fathers ; 
to know the first New England of the fathers, there is 
no better way than to study this man, — its last, its 
most typical incarnation. And as we study him, and 
then look back at the figure that emerges from the dusty 
books and manuscripts of two centuries ago, the final 
trait of him, that hides the rest, is this : strenuously, 
devoutly, he did what he deemed his duty. 

All about him he saw ever crescent disappointment 
and sorrow and earthly failure ; but he never lost heart, 
not ever for a moment ceased effort, with word and deed 
alike, to do good to mankind. Friutuosus — be fruit- 
ful, do God's work here on earth — was his last com- 
mand to his son. And the incessant training of his 
career in the art that in its meaner form he would have 
been the first to execrate, — the art of the actor, who 
can at will seem to be what in truth he is not, — made 
him what it makes good ministers to-day. More than 
other men they can sympathize with mankind : in agony, 
in sorrow, in sin, men turn to them for aid, for counsel, 
for charity in all its divinest forms. And this the saintly 
actors give as no other men can, thus doing good un- 
speakably reverend. The very weakness of their calling, 
20 



306 COTTON MATHER. 

SO palpable to those who have not known their benefi- 
cence, — so fruitful of obloquy and execration in those 
who neither share their faith nor will let themselves 
sympathize, — makes them more blessed to mankind 
than a thousand of their more candid fellows. Out of 
evil God brings good : it is the histrionic insincerity of 
priesthood that brings to unhappy men the Divine sym- 
pathy of priests. And in his ministry Cotton Mather 
never faltered : with ever growing earnestness, he went 
through that grim and sorrowful old New England, in 
every deliberate thought and act ministering to the 
bodies and the souls of the people of God. Fructuosus 
— fruitful — is the final word for him. 

And what fruit has his priesthood borne that is with 
us to-day? New England is far enough from the stern 
creed in which alone he saw hope of salvation. But 
not long ago an old friend, talking of the New England 
that both of us love, spoke a phrase I like to remem- 
ber : *' We have here," he said, " what the world has 
never seen before : we have devout free thought." It 
is the Protestantism of the fathers that has won us our 
freedom. But freedom alone were a curse. It is the 
faithful earnestness of the Puritan priesthood that has 
kept our freedom from strapng into that pert irrever- 
ence which elsewhere than here has made so many who 
cast aside the false cast with it the true. And among 
the Puritan priests there was never one, I beHeve, more 
faithfully earnest than this Cotton Mather. 

One hundred and sixty-three years have passed since 
he was laid in his father's tomb on Copp's Hill. And 
few of us to-day can believe that he is gone to such 
a little company of God's elect as would make the 



THE PURITAN PRIEST. 307 

heaven he preached of. If he be, then, when by 
chance he looks back at the earth where he laboured, 
he must see a sight that for the instant should dim the 
joys of Paradise. But there are not a few to-day who 
dream of a heaven in whose blessedness all the fetters 
of humanity are broken ; where what is best in men 
waxes better than men can even dream, amid the ever- 
growing glories of eternal freedom from sin, and weak- 
ness, and sorrow. And if by chance his eyes have 
opened again in a heaven like this, and if from thence 
he looks back to an earth where his sins and errors 
have borne little fruit, but where the devoutness of the 
free thought of New England speaks still for what was 
best in his human life, he sees, I like to think, little 
that should disturb the great serenity of his peace. 



AUTHORITIES. 



The books I have cited are these : — 

Andros Tracts, 3 vols. Boston : Prince Society, 1868- 
1874. 

Calef, Robert: More Wonders of the Invisible World, 
etc. Salem : Gushing and Appleton, 1823. 

Massachusetts Historical Society: Collections: — 
Fourth Series, Vol. VIII. : The Mather Papers, 1868. 
Fifth Series, Vols. V.-VII. : Sewall's Diary, 1 878-1 882. 
Sixth Series, Vols. I., II.: Sewall's Letter-Book, 1886- 
1888. 
Mather, Cotton : Manuscript diaries in possession of the 
Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston; of the American 
Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass. ; and of the Con- 
gregational Library, Boston. 

Magnalia Christi Americana. Hartford : Silas 

Andrus and Son. Vol. I., 1855; Vol. II., 1853. 

Parentator. Boston: Nathaniel Belknap, 1724. 

Paterna (manuscript), in possession of Mrs. Skin- 
ner of Chicago. 

Mather, Samuel : Life of Cotton Mather. Boston : Sam- 
uel Gerrish, 1729. 

Palfrey, John Gorham: Compendious History of New 
England, 4 vols. Boston: J. R. Osgood & Co., 1884. 

Peabody, Wm. B. O. : Life of Cotton Mather. Sparks's 
American Biographies, Vol. VI. Boston: Hilliard, Gray, 
& Co., 1836. 

Quincy, Josiah : History of Harvard University, 2 vols. 
Cambridge: John Owen, 1840. 



310 AUTHORITIES. 

Sibley, John Langdon : Harvard Graduates, Vol. III. 
Cambridge: Charles William Sever, 1885. 

Upham, Charles W. : Salem Witchcraft. 2 vols. Boston ; 
Wiggin and Lunt, 1867. 

The numerous standard books I have consuhed I need 
not name. I may perhaps, however, mention the remark- 
able impression of Puritan ways of thought that may be 
obtained by reading the first two volumes of Stedman 
and Hutchinson's " Library of American Literature " ; 
and the notable suggestiveness of Mr. Brooks Adams's 
" Emancipation of Massachusetts." 



INDEX. 



Adams, Brooks, his "Emancipation 
of Massachusetts," 310. 

Aduhery, Cotton Mather's view of, 57, 
163, 166, 16S, 219. 

Afflations, 28, 144, 157, 179, 188; In- 
crease Mather's view of, 28. 

Allen, Rev. Mr., 59, 137. 

America, Cotton Mather's view of, 88, 
91, 159, 162. See England. 

Andros. Sir Edmund, Governor of 
New England, arrival, 43 seq., 69; 
life and character, 70; tyranny, 71 
seq., 75 ; deposed by Revolution, 76 ; 
subsequent career, 77 ; mentioned, 
80, 89, 190, 300. 

" Andros Tracts," 73. 

Angels, Cotton Mather's view of, 52, 
65, 80, 93. 115 seq., \i,\seq., 149, 151, 
157, 162 seq., 165 seq., i6S seq., 171, 
176, 179, 186, 19s, 206, 279; vision 
of, 63. 

Anne, Queen, igi, 220, 249. 

Apostasy, Cotton Mather's view of, 68, 
149; Increase Mather's view of, 141. 
See Brattle Street Church. 

Assurances, of Cotton Mather, 49 seq., 
61 seq., 84 seq., 92 seq., 116, 119, 122, 
140 seq., 144 seq., 148 seq., 155 seq., 
162 seq., 167 seq., 174 seq., 181, 1S6, 
188, 193 seq., 206, 210, 214, 264, 269, 
277, 2S4, 2qo ; of Increase Math- 
er, 47, 72, 84, 136 seq., 139, 284. 
See Particular Faiths, Premonitions, 
Presences of God. 

Atheism, temptations to, 25, 81, 206, 
230. 

Attention to Divine Services, Cotton 
Mather's, 55, 169. 

Banister, John, libels Cotton Math- 
er, 232 seq. 

Beliomont, Earl of, Governor of Mas- 
sachusetts, 130, i4oseq., 144^^^,151. 

Bishop, Bridget, hanged for witchcraft, 
98, no. 

Blackmore, Sir Richard, 236. 



Books, Cotton Mather favors hawking 
of, 54, 244, 248; gives away, 60, 85, 
175' 179 seq., 212, 215 ; works with, 
despite devils, 112 seq. See Library, 
Writings. 

Boston, in Lincolnshire, 8 seq. ; in 
Massachusetts, 9, 31, 55, 71, 76, 87, 
100, 276 seq., 285, 301. 

Bradstreet, Simon, Governor of Mas- 
sachusetts, 41. 

Brattle, Thomas, Treasurer of Harvard 
College, 144, 150. 

Brattle, Rev. William, of Cambridge, 
73. 136, 141. 142 seq., 144, 150, 201. 

Brattle Street Church (P'ourth Church 
of Boston), origin, 141 seq. ; mani- 
festo, 142; troubles concerning, 143, 
147 seq ; assurances of Cotton 
Mather concerning, 148 seq. ; men- 
tioned, 150, 185. 

Bridge, Rev. Mr., Minister of Old 
Church, 225 seq., 234, 252. 

Bromfield, Mr., 186, 196, 229. 

Burgess, Colonel, Governor of Massa- 
chusetts, 249. 

Burnet, William, Governor of Massa- 
chusetts, 273. 

Burroughs, Rev. George, hanged for 
witchcraft, loi. 

Byfield, Colonel, Speaker of the House, 
139. 199- 

Calef, Robert, his " More Wonders 
of the Invisible World," 105, 108, 
136, i^ioseq., 179 ; cited, loi ; Cotton 
Mather's view of, 118, 151, 169, 182, 
186. 

Calvin sweetens Cotton's mouth, 12. 

Charles II., 23, 40, 46, 62, 84, 93. 

Charters of Harvard College, of 1650, 
granted by General Court, 131, 133; 
falls with Charter of Massachusetts, 
134. Of 1692, granted by Phipps, 135 ; 
vetoed by King William, 137. Of 
1696, passed by Council and opposed 
by ministers, 137. Of 1697, drawn by 



312 



INDEX. 



I. Mather, and passed, 138 ; vetoed ; 
by King William, 140. Of 1699. pro- j 
posed by Bellomont, 140; sectarian 
proviso inserted, 141 ; vetoed by 
Bellomont, 141. Of 1700, Kmg ad- 
dressed for, 144. Of 1703 and 1705, 
suggested by Dudley, 202, 220. Of 
1650, revived irregularly by Gen- 
eral Court and Dudley, 224 seq. 

Charters of Massachusetts, First or 
Colonial, history and fall, 24, 39 seg ., 
46; legal consequences of fall, 71 ; 
attempts to renew, 74; prospect of 
restoration, 77 ; hopelessly lost, 79 ; 
mentioned, 21,23,92, 131. Second 
or Provincial, grant and character of, 
86, gi, 152, 300 ; how received, 87; 
quarrels concerning, 125 

Chauncy, Rev. Charles, President of 
Harvard College, iS, 132, 137, 179. 

Cheever, Ezekiel, schoolmaster, 34. 

Christ Church, Boston, 290. 

Church of England, 5, 19, 43, 68, 71, 
174, 235, 282, 289 seq. 

Civil Wars, effect on New England, 
21, 39- 

Colman, Rev. Benjamin, of Brattle 
Street Church, 142, 150 seq., 185, 
226, 246, 251, 283, 294, 299. 

Commencement at Harvard College, 
»8, 37, 53, 209, 220, 238, 241, 264, 
267, 269. 

Connecticut, 15, 70, 186, 227, 248. 

Conversation, Cotton Mather's, i63, 
x66, 278. 

Cooke, Elisha, opponent of Provincial 
Charter, 125, 128. 

Cooper, Edward, marries Elizabeth 
Mather, 297. 

Cooper, Rev. William, of Brattle 
Street Church, 281, 299. 

Corey, Giles, pressed to death, 102. 

Correspondents of Cotton Mather, | 
213,235,236,238. 

Cotton, Mrs, Joanna, wife of John, of | 
Plymouth, 171, 177. | 

Cotton, Rev. John, of Boston, his life j 
and character, 7-13 ; mentioned, 20, 1 

, 23, 37> 51, 57, 65, 300. 

Cotton, Rev. John, of Hampton, 251. 

Cotton, Mrs., widow of John, of Hamp- 
ton, marries Increase Mather, 251. 

Cotton, Rev. John, of Plymouth, dis- 
grace and death, 163, 171 seq., ijj. 

Cotton, Maria, daughter, of John, of 
Boston, marries Increase Mather, 
20. See Mather. 

Cotton, Mrs. Sarah (Story), widow of 
John, of Boston, marries Richard 
Mather, 13. 20. 

Covenant of Cotton Mather, 58. 

Craighead, Rev. Thomas, 254. 

Creed of Puritans. See Puritans. 



Crew of Andros, 76 seq., 152. See 
Dudley, Randolph, Stoughton. 

Cromwell, Oliver, 4, 244. 

Cutler, Rev. Timothy, President of 
Yale College, 282, 290. 

Daily Life, Cotton Mathers, 1683, 54; 
1706, 212 ; 1709, 230; 1711, 237, 

Dancing mtroduced in Boston, 44. 

Danforth, Rev. Mr., of Cambridge, 
103, 125. 

Death, Cotton Mathers view of, 49, 
58, 60, 68, 86; 117, 148 seq., 157, 164, 
169 seq.f 17s, 181, 204, 208, 210, 217, 
240, 243, 259 seq., 27s, 290, 292 seq., 
298. 

Declaration of Indulgence, 72. 

Deerfield sacked, 201, 209. 

De Foe, Daniel, 235, 262. 

Delights, Cotton Mather's view of, 6 , 
213. 

Democracy in New England, 23 seg., 
39 seq., 79, 124, 130 seq. See Royal- 
ists, Theocracy. 

Devil, Puritan view of the, 26 seq., 91 
seq. 

Diaries of Cotton Mather, i, 36, 47 
seq., 84, 154, 183, 234- 

Dudley, Joseph, Governor of Massa- 
chusetts, career until 1702, ^oseq., 76 
seq., 190 seq. ; appointed Governor, 
130, 153 ; personal character, 200, 219, 
229, 230; administration, 201, 219, 
220, 22S ; relations with the Mathers, 
130, 153, 199, 225 seq., 231, 234, 238, 
251 ; relations with Harvard College, 
201, 220, 224 seq. ; charges against, 
200 seq., 220, 222 seq. ; retirement 
and death, 249, 273. 

Dummer, Lieut. -Gov. of Massachu- 
setts, 273. 

Dwight, Tim, spiritual experience, 32. 

Ecstasy of Cotton Mather, a typical, 
49. 

Education, Cotton Mather's methods 
of, 60, 163 seq., 175, 212 seg., 237, 
240, 242 seq., 247, 258, 265. 

Ejaculations of Cotton Mather, 55, 57, 
170,235. 

Election and the Elect, doctrine of, 6, 
29; examples of, 8, 14, 16, 22, 27. 
2qseq.,Z2 seq., 52, 63, 115, 119, 163 
seq., 172, ij6 seq., iSo seq., 210 seq-, 
217, 242 seq., 247, 256, 285 seq., 294. 

Eliot, Rev. John, Apostle to the In- 
dians, 27, 58 seq. ; Cotton Mather's 
Life of, 84. 

Enchantments, Cotton Mather's view 
of, 113. 

England, Cotton Mather's view of, 
158. 269. 

Ethics, Cotton Mather's view of, 258. 



INDEX. 



313 



Evil speaking, Cotton Mather's view 

of, 54, 183, 214,241 seq. 
Evil Spirits, Cotton Mather's view of, 

2, 25, 62 seq., 69, gi seq,, 99, 102, 

104, \(±iseq., no seq., 116, 118 seq., 

122 seq., 143, 165, 168 j^y. , 179, 189, 

210, 240, 275. 
Executions, 65, 98 seq., loi seq., no, 

116, 171 j^y., 209. 
Exposition of Scripture at Harvard 

College, 184, 268. 

Fast, a typical private, 59. 

Fasts of Cotton Mather, 36, 57, 61 , 63, 
80, 112, 114 seq., 119, 140, 151, 155 
seq., 162, 165, 167 seq., 176, 179, 186 
seq., 193, 202, 205 seq. f2io, 213, 231, 
236,255. 

Fines, Cotton Mather lays on himself, 

Flock of Cotton Mather. See Second 
Church. 

Foreign Affairs, Cotton Mather's in- 
terest in, 53, 61 seq., 155, 157, 162, 
166, 168, 211, 23S, 269. 

Foxe's Book of Martyrs, 5, 280. 

Franklin, Benjamin, 297. 

Freemen of Massachusetts, 23, 39, 46, 
86. See Theocracy. 

French harass New England, 78, 124, 
130, 201, 214, 230. 

Gee, Rev. Joshua, of Second Church, 
'■ 299. 
Gentlewoman makes love to Cotton 

Mather, 204 seq., 209. 
George I., 249, 273, 285. 
George II., 273. 
George, Mr., 233, 251, 255. 
George, Madam Lydia (Lee), 251, 252 

seq. ; marries Cotton Mather, 255. 

See Mather. 
Glasgow, University of, makes Cotton 

Mather D.D., 231 seq. 
Good Devices,Cotton Mather's, nature 

of, 231, 234; examples of, 234 seq., 

237, 239 seq., 247 seq-, 255, 260 seq., 

263, 266, 269, 272, 274 seq , 281, 288 

seq., 293. 
Granado thrown into Cotton Mather's 

bedroom, 279 seq. 
Greenough, Anne, elect child, 30. 
"Guardian," Cotton Mather would 

contribute to the, 244. 

Hackshaw, Robert, publisher, 186. 

Hamilton, Duke of, duel, 250. 

Harvard, Rev. John, of Charlestown, 
131- 

Harvard College, foundation and early 
history, 7, 28, 131 seq. ; early charac- 
ter, 35 seq., 132 seq. ; struggle be- 
tween priesthood and protestantism 



in, under Increase Mather, 45, 73 
seq., 133 seq., 140 seq., 144 seq, 151 
seq. ; progress under Willard, 201 
seq., 220 seq.; progress under Lev- 
erett, 221, 224 seq., 227 seq., 238, 
258, 264, 268 seq., 282 seq., 289 seq.. 
292 seq. ; later history, 287, 294, 301; 
Cotton Mather's relations with, 35 
seq., bo, 83, 137, 140 .y^^., i^^seq-, 
201, 209, 221, 225 seq., 238, 240 seq., 
258, 264, 267, 269, 283, 289, 292 seq , 
301. See Brattle Street Church, 
Charters, Commencement, Over- 
seers. 

Heresy, Cotton Mather's policy to- 
ward, III. 

Hoar, Rev. Leonard, President of 
Harvard College, 26, 132. 

Holidavs observed in Boston, 44, 6g, 
236. ' 

HolHs, Thomas, benefactor of Harvard 
College, 282 seq. , 285. 

Howell, Nathaniel, son-in-law of Mrs. 
Lydia Mather, dies in answer to Cot- 
ton Mather's prayers, 256 seq , 274 ; 
Cotton Mather administers estate of, 
257, 261, 276, 289. 

Howell, Mrs. Nathaniel, 255 seq. 

Hubbard, Mrs. Elizabeth (Clark), 
marries Cotton Mather, 207. See 
Mather. 

Hull, John, father of Mrs Samuel 
Sewall, 32. 

Hull, Mrs. John, 29, 59. 

Hutchinson, Mrs. Ann, heretic, 7, 10, 

23- 

Hutchinson, Colonel, 166, 299. 

Idolatry, Cotton Mather accused of, 

263. 

Illicit Trade, 201, 215, 219, 222 seq. 

Impurities, Cotton Mather's conscious- 
ness of, 50 seq., 56 seq., 66, 157, 163, 
168, 193, 202, 204, 206, 218 seq., 240, 
242, 266, 269. 

Inconsistency, Cotton Mather's, 19 w , 
29, 145 «., 160 n. 

Indians, Puritan view of, 26 seq., 91 
seq. ; harass New England, 23, 71, 
78, 124, 130, 2or, 214 seq., 228, 236, 
273 ; Cotton Mather's conduct to, 
175, 178, 182, 187. See French, 
Illicit Trade. 

Inoculation introduced by Cotton 
Mather, 275 seq. ; of Samuel Mather, 
277 ; of the Minister of Roxbury, 279. 

James II., 41, 61 seq., 70,72, lA^eq., 
89 ; his view of Harvard College, 

Journeys of Cotton Mather, 118, 162, 
170, 207, 215. 



3^4 



INDEX. 



KiDD, Captain, 78, 130. 
King Plillip's War, 2.b seq. 
King's Chapel, Boston, 290. 
Kirk, Colonel Percy, 40 seq-, 47, 62, 
71, 84, 92 seq. 

Latin, Cotton Mather's notes in, 54, 

63, 16S, 288, 289. 

Letters of Cotton Mather: to Mrs. Jo- 
anna Cotton, concerning J. Cotton's 
death, 177 ; to Craighead, concerning 
Mrs. G., 254; to Dudley, 130, 153, 
iqo, 226 ; to England, concerning 
Dudley, 222 ; to Mrs. G. , 252 ; to a 
gentleman in Connecticut, concern- 
ing Yale College, 248 ; to John 
Richards, concerning witchcraft, 107, 
no; to Saltonstall, concerning Yale 
College, 267 ; to Stephen Sewall, 
concerning witchcraft, J02, loS ; to 
Sliute, concerning Harvard College, 
26S; to Winthrop, with anecdote, 
250; to Yale, 267. 

Letters of Increase Mather: alleged 
forgery, 46; to Dudley, 190, 226. 

Leverett, Rev. John, President of 
Harvard College, 73, 136, 138, 141, 
144, 195, 221, 225, 22S, 233, 238, 264, 
268, 274, 283, 290, 292. 

Library of Cotton M:ither, isS, 179, 
197, 291, 297. See Books, Writings. 

Liglitnnigand Tempest, Cotton Math- 
er's view of, 91, 128. 

"Magnalia Christi Americana." See 

Writmgs of Cotton Mather. 
Manifesto. See Brattle Street 

Church. 
Marlborough, Duke of, 193,226. 
Marriage, Cotton Mather's view of, 56, 

60. See Widowhood. 
Marv, Queen, 75 .r^^-, i35. i54; her 

" Divine Sentence," 78. 
Massachusetis, history of, 21, 23, 26 
seq.^ 39 seq , 70 seq.^ 86 seq.^ 90 seq., 
124 seq., 130, 151 seq , 190, 199 seq , 
7.\()seq, 228, 249, 273; population 
of, in 1665, 31 ; in 1709, 228. 
IMather, Mrs. Abigail (Phillips), first 
wife of Cotton, 68, 116, 168, 176, 181, 
188, 192 seq., 202 seq., 220. 
Mather, Rev. Dr. Cotton, of Second 
Church, ancestry, 7 seq. 
1662-3, birth, 20. 

1663-74, St. i-ii, circumstances of 
his youth, 24 seq. ; his childhood, 
28, 33 seq. 
1674-78, jEt. n-rs, at Harvard Col- 
Icgs, 35 seq., 132 ; begins days of 
fasting, 36 ; joins church, 37 ; takes 
bachelor's degree, 37. 
1679, St. t6, stud es medicine, and 
conquers impediment of speech, 48. 



1680, aet. 17, begins preaching, 48; 
assistant at Second Church, 49, 

1681, aet. 18 {Dutry extant), ecsta- 
sies and depressions, 49; besetting 
sins, 50; methods of devotion, 51 ; 
particular faith concerning Spanish 
Indian, 52 ; takes Master's degree, 
53 ; refuses cail to New Haven, 53 ; 
elected pastor of Second Church, 
53- 

1683, aet. 20 {Diary extant), daily 
habits, 54 ; imposes fines on him- 
self, 55 ; meditation in bed, 56 ; un- 
clean lemutations, ejaculations, 57. 

1685, St 7.2[Diary extant), zov<in2^\\\. 
with God, 58 ; ordination, 58 seq. ; 
pastoral work, 59; treatment of 
pupils, 60 ; Overseer of Harvard 
College, 60 ; thoughts of marriage, 
60; accession ot James \.\.., an- 
swering prayers and vows, turns 
his attention to witchcraft, 61 seq., 
84, 92 s^q. ; vision of angel, 63, 93 ; 
character at twenty-three. 65. 

1686, St. 23 {Diary extant), court- 
ship and marriage to Abigail Phil- 
lips, 65 seq. ; first publication, 66 ; 
begins housekeeping, 67 ; porten- 
tous vision and illness, 68; thanks- 
giving for recovery, and resolutions 
to oppose superstition, 68 seq. 

1687, St. 24, pastoral work, go. 
16S8, St. 25, agency of Increase 

Mather, in England, leaves him 
in sole charge of Second Church, 
73 ; character and position at 
twentv-five. 79 ; domestic life, 81 ; 
entertains bewitched girl (Good- 
win). 81, 93, too 

1689, St. 26, a leader in the Revolu- 
tion, 82. 

1690, St. 27, baptizes Sir W Phipps, 
86, 91 ; preaches on periwigs, 80 
seq. ; Fellow of Harvard College, 
83 ; his hasty temper, 83. 

1691, St. 28, constant attention to 
witchcraft, 84. 

1692, St. 29 {Diary extant), pastoral 
work and physical condition, 85; 
return of Increase Mather with 
new Charter, rewarding prayers, 
increases eagerness to serve God, 
86 seq., in; his relations with 
Phipps, 90 seq. ; his character at 
twenty-nine, too, 105, 109; his 
relation to Salem witchcraft, 90, 
93, 98, \oQ seq.. 108, III seq. 

1693, St. 30 {Diary extant), be- 
witched girl, 114; pastoral work 
and angelic communications, 115 
seq : malformed son, 116; plans 
I' Magnalia " and " Biblia Amer- 
icana," 117 seq. ; visits Salem, 



INDEX. 



315 



where devils steal sermon, 1 18 j^^. ; 
the bewitching of Margaret Rule, 
104 seq.., 118 seq.\ his daughter 
Mary dies, 119; Calef accuses him 
of priestcraft, 105, 108 ; accused of 
witchcraft, 120; political conduct 
under Phipps, 125 seq. | 

1694, aet 31, his last relations with I 
Phipps, 127 seq. 

1695, aet. 32, portentous hail-storm, 
128. 

1696, set. 33 {Diary extant), writes 
Life of Phipps, 108, 155 ; daughter 
Mehitable accidentally smotiiered, 
156; preparing " Magnalia,-' 137; 
opposes lay Charter of Harvard 
College, 137; excessive cold, 156; 
deprecates God's wrath concern- 
ing witciicraft, 122, 156. 

1697, St. 34 {Diary extatit), ecstasies 
and assurances, 157; finishes 
"Magnalia," 158; angelic assur- 
ances, 162 ; serious and sacred 
hilarity, 163 ; disgrace of John 
Cotton, of Plymouth, 163 ; spiritual 
instruction of Katj-, 164. 

1698, aet. 35 (Diary extant). Brattle 
Street Church organized, 141 seq. ; 
assurances concerning " Magna- 
lia," 167; overwrought condition, 
167 seq. ; Latin confession, 168 ; 
prayer against Calef, 169 ; over- 
work, and flagging attention, 169; 
journey to Salem : popular ap- 
plause and brother's grave, 170 
seq. ; falls through bridge, 171 ; 
last sees J. Cotton, of Plymouth, 
172 ; reflections on burnt child, 
172 ; learns Spanish, 173. 

1699, aet. lb (Diary extant), pastoral 
work, \-]iseq. ; mother-in-law dies, 
174 seq. ; Nancy's recovery en- 
courages particular faith concern- 
ing Harvard College, 140, 175; 
petitions for sectarian proviso in 
College Charter, 140 seq. ; son 
Increase born, with assurances of 
salvation, 140. 176; assurances for 
College disappointed, 141 ; death 
of J. Cotton, of Plymouth, 177; 
Brattle Street manifesto, etc., 
142 seq. 

1700, aet. 37 (Diary extant), attacks 
Brattle Street in "Order of the 
Gospel," 148; opposes sale of 
drink to Indians, 178; his over- 
wrought condition, 148, 179; as- 
surances concerning Brattle Street. 
148 ; despatches " Magnalia " for 
publication, 179; assurances con- 
cerning his father and Harvard 
College disappointed, 144 seq. ; 
attacked in "Gospel Order Re- 



vived," 149 ; none others to 
oppose apostasy, 149; Increase 
Mather ordered to Cambridge and 
goes, 144 seq. ; attacks Brattle 
Street in " Defence of Evangelical 
Churches," 150 ; edi tying expe- 
rience with F. Turyl, 180 seq.; 
edifying experience with books, 
179; Calefs book, encouraged by 
Brattle Street, arrives, 150 seq , 
179; son Samuel dies, 181; friends 
vindicate the Mathers, 182 ; gross 
flattery, 182. 

1 70 1, £et. 38 (Diary extant), his 
general abstinence from evil- 
speaking, 183 ; prayers against 
Calef, a " vile tool," 186 ; " Mag- 
nalia " to be published, 187; So- 
cieties for Good Purposes, 187 ; 
love for wife, 188 ; premonition 
in prayer with widow, 187 ; In- 
crease Mather deposed from pres- 
idency, 152; quarrel with Sewall 
concerning deposition, 153, 183 
seq. ; interest in Yale College, 186 ; 
assurances concerning " Magna- 
lia," 188 ; view of evil spirits, 189 ; 
letter to Dudley, helping appoint- 
ment, 130, 153, 190. 

1702, set. 39 {Diary extant), state of 
mind at thirtv-nine, 191 ; first vigil, 
192 ; his wife's miscarriage, 192 ; 
arrival of Dudley, 191, 199; par- 
ticular faiths, etc. during wife's 
illness, 193 seq.; "Magnalia" 
arrives, 196 ; small-pox in family, 
196 seq. ; his wife's death, iq-j seq. ; 
reflections thereon, 202 seq. ; ad- 
dressed by amorous gentlewoman, 
204. 

1703, a?t. 40 {Diary extant), troubles 
with the gentlewoman, 204 seq.; 
relations with Harvard College, 
205; courtship of Mrs. Elizabeth 
(Clark) Hubbard, 207; abdicates 
office in Harvard College, 201 seq. ; 
marriage to Mrs. Hubbard, and 
subsequent condition, 208. 

1704, St. 41, pastoral work, 209. 

1705, aet. 42 (Diary exta7it). clogs in 
work, 210; self-examinations, 210 
seq : lengthy prayer, 211 ; methods 
of education, 165, 212. 

1706, aet. 43 (Diary extant), daily 
life, 212 seq. ; correspondents, 213; 
delights, 213; finishes " Biblia 
Americana," 214; Christianizing 
Negroes, 215; illicit trade with 
Indians, 215; journey to Andover, 
215: President Willard dies, 221 ; 
letter denouncing Dudley, 222 ; 
education of children. 216; hopes 
of presidency defeated, 221 ; Sam- 



3i6 



INDEX. 



uel born, 216; troubles with John 
Oliver, 217; with Phillips family 
concerning illicit trade, 217, 219; 
little Increase and his grandfather, 
218; vile thoughts, 218 5^y. 

1707, aet. 45 {fragment of Diary 
extant), interest in foreign affairs, 
219; final breach with Dudley 
destroys public influence, 222 seq. 

1708, ast. 45, private life, 229. 

1709, St. 46 (Diary extant). Good 
Devices begun, 231 ; employment 
and temptations, 230 ; fast on oc- 
casion of Dudley's feast, 231; a 
double sermon, 231 ; preaches 
against Dudley, 229 seq. 

1710, aet. 47, made D. D. by Uni- 
versity of Glasgow, 231 ; libelled 
in consequence, 232 seq. ; preaches 
against Dudley, 234. 

1 71 1, St. 48 (Diary extant), gives 
up copying diaries, 234; Good 
Devices, 235 seq ; a child's quar- 
rel, 236; meets Dudley at dinner, 
234 ; son Increase begins to trouble 
him, 237 ; prays for catalogue of 
his writings, 236 ; his mood at 
forty-nine, 237 seq. 

1712, ast. 49, Dudley orders his de- 
gree recognized, 238 ; professional 
work, 238. 

1713, aet. 50 (Diary extaft). Second 
Church breaking up, 239 ; happily 
free from hypochondria, 239 ; con- 
scious of impurity, 240; vigil con- 
cerning Salem witchcraft, 123, 240 : 
education of children, 240 ; troubles 
with son, and riotous youth, 241 
seq. ; too charitable to the \t'icked, 
242 ; family affairs, 242 seq. ; made 
F. R. S., 244 ; measles in family, 
245 ; illness and death of wife, 
maid, and three children, 245 seq. ; 
condition of family, 247 seq. ; fa- 
vors Yale College, 248. 

1714, aet. SI, letter in eighteenth 
century style, 250; his mother dies, 

250 ; Second Church breaking up, 

251 ; preaches scientific astronomy, 

1715, aet. 52, his third courtship, 252 
seq. ; Dudley's last official dinner, 
251 ; marriage to Mrs. Lydia (Lee) 
George, 255 ; violence in pulpit, 
252. 

1716, aet. 53 (Diary extant), first 
symptoms of wife's illness, 255 
seq.; death of Howell, answeiing 
prayer, 256 seq. ; undertakes ad- 
ministration of Howell's estate, 
2S7 : family affairs: Katharine's 
last illness. Increase's return from 
sea, Abigail's courtship, 257 seq. ; 



falls into fish-pond, 259; Abigail 
married, 259 ; Gov. Shute arrives, 
260; Katharine dies, 261; wife's 
symptoms worse, 261 ; a hearty 
thanksgiving, 262 ; certifies to 
ghost story, 262 ; at Pemberton's 
death-bed, 263. 

1717, aet. S4 (Diary extant), his view 
of Pemberton, 263 ; accused of 
idolatry, 263 ; relations with Shute 
and College, 264 ; son Increase 
vexes him, 264; first grandchild, 
265 ; at Mrs. Sewall's death-bed, 
265 ; Increase ciiarged with bas- 
tardy, 265 seq. ; writes Yale, and 
names Yale College, 266 seq. 

1718, JEt. 55 [Diary extant), troubled 
by growing apostasy at Harvard, 
268 seq. ; family trouble, 269 seq. ; 
his wife's madness transpires, 270 
seq. 

1719-20, aet. 56-57, private life, 273. 

1721, ast. s^ (Diary extant), trom>]es 
with Increase, 274 seq. ; Sam sent 
to college, 274 ; Second Church 
breaking up, 275 ; small-pox in 
town excites him to introduce 
inoculation, 275 ; popular panic 
against him, 276 seq- ; Abigail 
dies, 278 ; attempt to assassinate 
him, 279 seq. ; Increase defends 
him, 280; exhaustion, 281. 

1722, aet. 59, conduct concerning 
Harvard College, 282 seq. 

1723, ast. 60, death of Increase 
Mather, 2S3 seq. ; position at 
sixty-one, 287. 

1724, ast. 61, writes " Parentator," 
288; family troubles, 289; Church 
of England assaulting Harvard Col- 
lege, 289 seq. ; retrospective medi- 
tation, 290 seq. ; death of Leverett 
revives hopes of presidency, 292 ; 
hopes disappointed, 293 ; wife de- 
serts him, 291; news of death of 
Increase, 294 ; wife returns peni- 
tent, 291 ; rumors of safety of In- 
crease prove false, 295 ; again 
disappointed of presidency, 294 ; 
Elizabeth marries, 297 ; Franklin 
visits him, 297 ; severe illness, 295 ; 
his last hymn, 296. 

1725-27, aet. 62-64, life unchanged, 

298; Elizabeth dies, 298. 
1728, aet. 65, last illness, death, and 

burial, 298 seq. ; character and 

influence, 30-^ seq. 
Mather, Cotton, his children by Mrs. 

Abigail (Phillips) Mather: — 

1. Abigail (b. and d bef. 1693), 81. ^ 

2. Katharine, or Katy (b. bef. 1693, 
d. 1716), 8r, 120, 164, 174, 237, 
245, 257 seq. 



INDEX. 



317 



3. Mary(b.bef. 1693, d. 1693), 81,119. 

4. Increase, malformed (b. and d. 
1693), 116, 176. 

5. Abigail, or Nibby (b. 1694, m. 

D. Willard, d. 1721), 154, 156, 178, 

196, 237, 245, 255, 258 seq.y 265, 
278. 

6. Mehitabel (b. 1695, d. 1696 , 154, 
156. 

7. Hannah, or Nancy (b. 1697, d. 
after 1728), 140, 158, 172, 175, 178, 

197, 204, 210, 237. 245, 277 seq., 
291, 298. 

8. Increase, or Creasy or Cressy (b. 
1699, d. 1724), 176, 178, 197, 214, 
218, 237, 239 seq., 24s, 247, 255 
seq.., 261, 264 seq., 269, 273 seq., 
278, 280, 294 seq. 

9. Samuel (b. \^oo, d. 1 700-1), 178, 
181. 

Mather, Cotton, his children bv 
Mrs. Elizabeth (Clark- Hubbard) 
Mather: — 

10. Elizabeth, or Lizzy (b. 1704, m. 

E. Cooper, d. 1726), 208, 236. 243, 
245, 248, 278, 297 seq. 

11. Samuel, Rev. Dr., or Sammy 
(b. 1706, d. 1785), 33, 36, 165, 216, 
230, 236, 248, 256, 258, 265 seq., 
274i 277 seq., 29 1, 298 seq. See 
Rev. Dr. Samuel Mather's " Life 
of Cotton Mather.'' 

12. Nathaniel (b. and d. 1709), 230. 

13. Jerusha (b. 171 1, d. 1713), 237, 

243- 245. 247- 

14. Eleazar, ) twins (b. and d. 1713), 

15. Martha, ) 245, 247. 
Mather, Creasy or Cressy. See In- 
crease, eighth child of Cotton. 

Mather, Rev. Eleazar, son of Richard, 
17. 25. 

Mather, Mrs. Elizabeth (Clark-Hub- 
bard), second wife of Cotton, 208, 
216, 245 seq. 

Mather, Hannah, daughter of Increase. 
See Oliver. 

Mather, Rev. Dr. Increase of Second 
Church. President of Harvard Col- 
lege, life until settled at Second 
Church, \j seq., 24 seq. ; career until 
fall of Charter, 25 seq , 33, 37 ; home 
career until agency to England, 44 
seq., 58 seq , 72 ; agency to England 
securing newCharter, -jiseq., jj seq , 
86 seq , 89; home career under new 
Charter : relations to Phipps and 
witchcraft, 84, 87, 89 seq., 92, 98, 100, 
104 seq., 124 seq. ; struggle as Presi- 
dent to secure Harvard College to 
orthodoxy, 132 seq, 143 seq-, 184; 
private life meanwhile, and later 
career, 163, 166, 181, 185 seq., 191, 
199, 207, 218, 221, 223, 225 seq.t 231 



seq., 239, 242, 24s, 250 seq., 258, 268, 
273. 275, 277, 279, 289; death and 
character, 283 seq. Life of, by Cot- 
ton, see Writings, s. v. Parentator. 

Mather, Katharine, infant daughter of 
Increase, 56. 

Mather, Mrs. Katharine (Holt), first 
wife of Richard, 17, 74. 

Mather, Katy. See Katharine, second 
child of Cotton. 

Mather, Lizzy. See Elizabeth, tenth 
child of Cotton. 

Mather, Mrs. Lydia (Lee-George), 
third wife of Cotton, 255 seq. , 238 seq., 
261 seq., 265 seq., 270 seq., 289, 291. 

Mather, Mrs. Maria (Cotton), first wife 
of Increase, 20, 243, 250. 

Mather, Mrs. (Cotton), second wife 
of Increase, 251. 

Mather, Nancy. See Hannah, seventh 
child of Cotton. 

Mather, Nathaniel, son of Increase, 
81,83, 170. 

Mather, Rev. Nathaniel, son of Rich- 
ard, 166. 

Mather, Nibby. See Abigail, fifth 
child of Cotton. 

Mather, Rev Richard, the emigrant, 
life and character, 13 seq. ; men- 
tioned, 25, 37, 48, 57, 65, 300. 

Mather, Mrs. Sarah (Story-Cotton), 
second wife of Richard, 13, 20. 

Mather, Rev. Samuel, son of Richard, 
19. 

Mather, Rev. Dr. Samuel, son of 
Cotton, his" Life of Cotton Mather," 
cited, 48, 59, 82, 165, 208 seq., 232, 
255> 257, 298 seq. ; mentioned, 53, 
76, 179, 212. 

"Mather Papers," cited, iio, 177, 250; 
mentioned, 37. 238, 249, 262. 

May, Samuel, religious impostor, 174. 

Maylem, Joseph, misconduct, 44, 69. 

Measles, epidemic in Boston, 245 seq. 

Medicine, Cotton Mather's interest m, 
48, 211, 240, 242, 247. 266, 27s seq., 
280. 

Ministers of New England, 36, 72, 79, 
98, 103, 125, 132, 134, 140, 301. See 
Priests, and all proper names with 
prefix Rev. 

Mohun, Lord, duel, 250. 

Monmouth, Duke of, 40, 41, 128. 

Moody, Rev. Mr , 59, 83. 

Mottoes, of Cotton Mather's Diaries, 
53, 157, 167, 191; of Harvard Col- 
lege, 133. 

Myles, Rev. Mr., of King's Chapel, 
290. 

Negroes, Cotton Mather's view of, 
120, 153, 183, 215 jey., 242; Sewall's 
view of, 183. 



3i8 



INDEX. 



New England, 23, 31 seq., 40 seq., 44, I 

71, 77 seq., 87, 92 seq.i 282, 306. 6"^^ I 

Magnalia, Massachusetts, Puritans. 
New North Church, of Boston, 241, 

251,278. I 

Niece of Mrs. Lydia Mather, 278, 289, 

291. 
North Church. See Second Church 

of Boston. 
Notes of Sermons, Cotton Mather 

takes, 33, 169. 
Numbers, Cotton Mather's view of 

mystic, 18, 114, 186, 194, 206, 256, 

265. 

Oakes, Rev. Urian, President of Har- 
vard College, 37, 45> 132 seq., 137, 
300. 

Occultism, suggested theory of, 94 
seq.^ 105, 304 ; for some evidence, 
see Afflations, Angels, Assurances, 
Calef, Death, Devil, Ecstasy, En- 
chantments, Evil Spirits-, Fasts, Im- 
purities, Inonsistency, Original Sin, 
Particular Faiths, Pastoral Methods, 
Physical Condition, Prayer, Preach- 
in.^, Premonitions, Presences of God, 
Priests, Prophecy, Puritans, Reputa- 
tion, Revenge, Secrecy, Self-exam- 
ination, Spectral Evidence. Temper, 
Thanksgivings, Veracity, Vigils, Vis- 
ions, Witchcraft. 

Old Church ( First Church of Boston), 
51. 119, 185- 

Oliver, Mrs. Hannah (Mather), 217. 

Oliver, John, brother-in-law of Cotton 
Mather, 217. 

Onesimus, negro slave of Cotton 
Mather, 216, 242. 

Ordination, Cotton Mather's view of, 
59- 

Original Sin, doctrine of, 5 ; examples 
of, 8, 14. 16, 18, 2q seq., 33, 35, 81 ; 
Cotton Mather's view of, 211. See 
Self-examination. 

Overseers of Harvard College, 131, 
136 seq., 202, 268, 290. 

Oyer and Terminer, Court of, the 
Witch-Court, 98 seq., lor, 103 seq.. 
Ill, 122. 

Palfrey, John Gorham, his "Com- 
pendious History of New England," 
mentioned, 26, 31, 76, 97, 201, 219, 
226, 229. 

Parris, Rev. Samuel, of Salem Village, 

Particular Faiths, doctrine of, 52 ; of 
Cotton Mather, concerning Harvard 
College, 140 seq., 144 seq; 174 
seq.. 284 : concerning Mrs Abigail 
Mather, 193 seq., 203 ; various, 56, 
168, 172, 188; of Increase Mather, 



72, 141, 284. 5"^^ Assurances, Pre- 
monitions, Presences of God, Vis- 
ions. 
Pastoral Methods, Cotton Mather's 

Pastoral Visits, Cotton Mather's, 54, 
59, 80, 117, 175, 179, 212 seq., 238. 

Peabody, Wm. Bourne Oliver, his 
"Life of Cotton Mather," iii seq. 

Pemberton, Rev. Ebenezer, of Old 
South, 221, 226, 231, 233, 239, 246, 
251 seq., 262 seq. 

Phillips, Abigail, marries Cotton 
Mather, 66. See Mather. 

Phillips, Colonel, of Charlestown, 
father-in-law of Cotton Mather, 65, 
68, 73, 187, 198, 203, 217 seq. 

Phillips, Mrs., mother-in-law of Cot- 
ton Mather, 174. 

Phillips, John, brother-in-law of Cot- 
ton Mather, 203, 217, 220, 222. 266. 

Phipps, Lady, 89, 129, 155. 

Phipps, Sir William, Governor of 
Massachusetts, career until 1692, 78, 
83, 86 seq., 89 seq : character. 90, 
124, 126; relations with the Mathers, 
86, 90, 98 ; relations with witchcraft, 
98 seq., 104; administration, i2\seq., 
135 ; quarrels, retirement, and death, 
I2T seq. ; mentioned, t,oo seq. 

Physical Condition, Cotton Mather's, 
35> 37> 48 seq., 56 seq., 60, 65, 68, 
SSseq., 117, 127, 166 seq., 173, 179, 
202, 204, 2o6seq., 214, 235, 239 seq , 
243, 254. 281, 2S8, 295, 298. 

Pierpont, Mr., sues for degree, 268. 

Pirates harass New England, 78, 130, 
209. 

Plan of this book, 3. 

Populace, Cotton Mather's view of the, 
82. 

Port Royal, expeditions against, 78, 83, 
89, 219, 228. 

Prayer, answers to, 24 seq., 45, 50, 55, 
61 seq., 86 seq , 93, 120, 169, 203 seq., 
257, 274. 

Preaching, Cotton Mathers, 48 seq, 
51, 55 seq., 59, 61, 67, 80, 84 seq., 87, 
III, 112 seq., w] seq., 126, 144, 158, 

166 seq., 171 seq., 179, 202 seq., 207, 
211, 230 seq-, 234, 245 seq., 251 seq., 
265.295; Cotton Mather's view of, 
120, 182, 188, 251 seq.\ Increase 
Mather's view of, 139, 146. 

Premonitions, 8, 17, 25 seq., 47, 56, 
116, \^^seq., 166 seq., 180, 187, 192, 
»95i 259, 265 ; Cotton Mather's view 
of, 27. 

Presagious Impressions. See Premo- 
nitions. 

Presences of God, doctrine of, 22 ; 
Cotton Mather's, 51, 55, S5, 87, 162, 

167 ; Increase Mather's, 28, 47, 49. 



INDEX. 



319 



Priests, 2, 7, 304, 306. See Protestant- 
ism. 

" Primitive Counsellors," Increase 
Mather's sermon on, 125. 136. 

Prophecy, Cotton Mather's view of, 
191. 

Protestantism, its incompatibility with 
priesthood, 5, 22 seq., 287, 303, 306 , 
of Harvard College. 134, 225. 

Puritans, their creed, 4 seq., 29, 45, 
160; their policy, 7, 15, 21 seq , 39, 
42 seq., 88, 146, 158; their conduct 
and views, 17,26 seq., 2gseq , giseq., 
114, 141, 160; their ideals and char- 
acter, 74, 159, 161, 286 seq., 202 seq. 

Quakers, 7, 23, 84. 

Quincy, Josiah, President of Harvard 
College, his " History of Harvard 
University," cited, 35, 139 seq., 224, 
267, 283 ; mentioned, 131, 150, 220, 
226, 238, 282 ; his view of religious 
freedom at Harvard College, 133. 

Randolph, Edward, Royalist, 40, 46, 
73> 77- 

Regeneration. See Election. 

Representatives, Bill to require resi- 
dence among constituents, 126. 

Reputation, Cotton Mather's view of, 
66, 118, 120, 148 seq., 158, 167, 169 
se^., 205, 209 seq., 214, 230, 277. 

Resignation, Cotton Mather's view of, 
198. 

Revenge, Cotton Mather's view of, 66, 
210 se^., 236, 241. 

Revolution of 1689, 75 seq., 82. 

Richards, John, Judge of Witch-Court, 
107, no. 

Rogers, Rev. John, President of Har- 
vard College, 45, 133. 

Roxbury, Minister of, inoculated, 279. 

Royalists in New England, 40, 125, 
200, 229, 249. See Andros, Dudley, 
Randolph, Stoughton. 

Roval Society, Cotton Mather elected 
Fellow of, 244 ; publications of, 276. 

Rule, Margaret, bewitched, 104, 118 
seq- 

Sabbath-keeping, 13, 43, 68, 128, 
236. 

Salem witchcraft. See Upham, Witch- 
craft. 

Sal volatile, Cotton Mather's reflec- 
tion on, 243. 

Second Church of Boston, under the 
Mathers, 20, 24, 25, 28, 37, 49, 53, 
55. 66, 73, 85, 114 seq., 121, 133, 139, 
146 seq., 152, 182, 185, 202, 205, 212, 
216, 236. 239 seq , 251, 275, 279 seq. 

Secrecv, Cotton Mather's view of, 115, 
118, 162. 



Self-examination, of Cotton Mather, 
50, 61, 192, 210 seq., 266, 290; urged 
on children by Cotton Mather, 164, 
215, 242. 

Sermons, Cotton Mather's methods of 
preparing, 119, 212. 

Servants, status of, 32, 52, 119; in 
Cotton Mather's family, 156, 197, 
202, 216, 242, 245 seq. See Negroes, 
Onesimus, Slaves. 

Sewall, Elizabeth (Betty), daughter of 
Samuel, 2g seq. 

Sewall, Mrs. Hannah (Hull), wife of 
Samuel, 229, 265. 

Sewall, Jane, sister of Samuel, 32. 

Sewall, Rev. Joseph, of Old South, 
son of Samuel, 29, 262, 265, 293 seq., 
299. 

Sewall, Samuel, Chief Justice of Mas- 
sachusetts, relations to witchcraft, 
98, loi seq., 121; relations to Har- 
vard College, 137, 146, 153, 184, 186, 
225, 227, 268, 2S3 ; relations with 
the Mathers, 58 seq., 75, 80, 128, 
138 seq., 153, 163, 183 seq , 225 seq., 
229, 233, 251 seq , 265, 285, 289, 291 ; 
relations with Dudley, 200, 222 seq., 
225 seq., 229; accounts of public 
matters, 41 seq , 87, 129 ; private life 
and character, 29 seq., 34, 75, 80, 
151, 171, 185, 209, 219, 231, 233, 252, 
262, 265. 

Sewall, Samuel, " Diary," cited, 29 
seq., 34, 42 seq., 58 seq., 62, 75, 80, 83, 
87, Joi seq ,121,12$ seq., 137 seq., 
142 seq., 146, 151, 153, 158, 163, 171, 
183 seq., 191, 200, 209,221 seq., 22g 
seq. ,211 seq., 251 .rif^ , 262, 265, 268, 
285,299; mentioned, 26, 31,41, 153, 
209, 219 j^y., 231, 238, 246, 249 seq., 
259, 283, 289. 

Sewall, Samuel, " Letter-Book," cited, 
185 j^^. ,232; mentioned, 153. 

Sewall, Stephen, Clerk of Court, brother 
of Samuel, \02seq; Cotton Mather's 
letter to, 108. 

Shepard. Rev Mr., of Charlestown, 67. 

Shove, Rev. Seth, 32. 

Shrimpton, Mr., misconduct, 44. 

Shute, Samuel, Governor of Massa- 
chusetts, 249, 260, 263, 268 seq., 273. 

Sibley, John Langdon, his " Harvard 
Graduates,"' cited, 102, 150; men- 
tioned, 36, 83, 105, 132, 154, 208, 238, 
298. 

Slaves, 52, 280. See Negroes, Onesimus. 

Sleep, Cotton Mather's habitual, 212, 
n. See Vigils. 

Small-pox, epidemic in Boston, 193, 
202, 275 seq. ; in Cotton Mather's 
family, 196, 277. 

Societies for good purposes, 37, 68, 187, 
192, 211, 213, 248. 



320 



INDEX. 



South Church (Old South, Third 
Church of Boston), 30, 41, 43, 51, 80, 
152. 220 sea-, 265, 294. 

" Spectator,'' Cotton Mather would 
contribute to the, 244, 250. 

Spectral evidence, 97, 99. loi, 107, 
121 ; Cotton Mather's view of, 107 
seq , no seq. 

Spectres. See Evil Spirits. 

Stedman (Edmund Clarence), and 
Hutchinson (Ellen McKay), their 
"Library of American Literature," 
310. 

Stoughton, William, Lieut. Governor 
of ALissachusetts, relations to witch- 
craft, 93, 103 seq., 122 ; relations to 
Harvard College, 137, 139, 143, 145, 

151, 152 ; administrations, 127 seq.., 
130, 151 ; last days and character, 
132. 

Studies of Cotton Mather, 35 seq., 53 
seq., 59, 79, 214, 238. See Medicine, 
Royal Society, Writings of Cotton 
Mather. 

Style, Cotton Mather's literary, 161. 

Suicide, Cotton Mather tempted to, 
206. 

Swift, Jonathan, 229. 

Synods in New England, 45. 

Tailer, Lieut. Governor of Massa- 
chusetts, 249, 288. 

Temper, Cotton Mather's, 2, 83, 114, 
118, 153, 183 seq., 216, 239 j^y., 266, 
279 

Texts preached from. Cotton Mather's 
memoranda of, 48, 61, iii, 113 seq., 
166, 173, 182, 203, 212, 231. 

Thanksgivings of Cotton Mather, 50 
seq., 61 seq., 68, 114 seq., 158, 166, 
188, 191, 19s seq., 211, 214, 255, 
262. 

Theocracy in New England, 9, 21, 23 
seq., 39 seq., 70, 79, 125, 131, 141, 

152, 282 seq., 286. See Democracy. 
Thompson, Major, Cotton Mather's 

anecdote of, 250. 
Time, Cotton Mather's view of, 191. 
Tories. See Royalists. 
Turyl, Ferdinando, regenerate old man, 

180. 

Unitarianism, 287. 

Upham, Charles Wentworth, his " Sa- 
lem Witchcraft," cited, 290; men- 
tioned, 93, 97, 99, 291 ; his view of 
Cotton Mather, 102, 104, 290 seq. 

Vane, Sir Henry, Governor of Mas- 
sachusetts, 23. 

Vanity, Cotton Mather's, 100. 

Veracity, Cotton Mather's, i seq., 84, 
159, 161, 209. 



Verses, addressed to Cotton Mather, 
182, 203, 232; written by Cotton 
Mather, 34, 55, 296. 

Vigils of Cotton Mather, 123, 192, 194, 
205, 216, 240 seq. 

Visions, of Anne Griffin and Ruth 
Weeden, 262 ; of Mrs. Abigail 
Mather, n6, 196: of Cotton Mather, 
63, 67, 93, 180; of Increase Mather, 
28. 

Wadsworth, Rev. Benjamin, Presi- 
dent of Harvard College, 234, 268, 

294. 

Watts, Rev. Dr. IsaaC; 236, 244. 

Widowhood, Cotton Mather's view of, 
202, 204, 206. See Marriage. 

Wilkins, Mr., shopkeeper, 153, 183 
seq. 

Willard, Daniel, son-in-law of Cotton 
Mather, 25S seq., 262. 

Willard. Rev. Samuel, of Old South. 
Vice-President of Harvard College, 
30, 41, 43 seq., 59, 80, 137 seq., 143, 
151 seq., 20 1 seq., 220 seq. 

William of Orange, 7Sseq., 78, 89, 117, 
142, 191 ; his relation to Harvard 
College, 135, 137, 140. 

Williams, Rev. Mr., of Deerfield, 2or, 
216. 236. 

Williams, Eunice, captive, 236. 

Williams, Roger, 7, 23. 

Winslow, John, brings news of Revo- 
lution, 75. 

Winthrop, John, Governor of Massa- 
chusetts, 131. 

Winthrop. John, Cotton Mather's cor- 
respondence with, 214, 2-?8, 250. 

Winthrop, Wait, Cotton Mather's cor- 
respondence with, 238, 250. 

Wishes, of Cotton Mather, 113; of In- 
crease Mather, 26, 47. 

Witchcraft, doctrine of, 92 ; atWoburn, 
62, 69; at Boston, 81, 100, 114, 118 
seq. ; at Salem, 93, 98 seq. ; Cotton 
Mather's relation to, 62 seq., 81, 
84, 88, 93, 99, 100 seq,, 156, 290, 301 ; 
Cotton Mather's final view of, 106 
seq , 112, 122 seq., 155. See Angels, 
Calef, Evil Spirits, Occultism; c/. 
Howell, and p. 274. 

Writings of Cotton Mather, general 
remarks on, 2, 64, 112, 232, 236, 298. 
Separate works: " Biblia Ameri- 
cana." 118, 160, 212, 214, 232, 238 
" Death Made Easy and Happv," 
remarkable discovery of, igo. " De- 
fence of Evangelical Churches," 150. 
" Enchiridion," 270. " Essays to 
Do Good," 297. " Life of Nathan- 
iel Mather," 81, 170. " Life of Jon- 
athan Mitchel," 141. " Life of Sir 
William Phipps," 108, 155, 160,166. 



INDEX. 



321 



" Magnalia Christi Americana," ac- 
count of, 158 sea. ; Cotton Mather's 
experiences with, 167,179, 186 seq., 
196; cited, 3, T seq., 30, 5, 81, 106, 
132, 158 seq. ; mentioned, 26, 36, 45, 
84, 108, 117 seq. , 192, 232 . " Order of 
the Gospel," 148. " Parentator,'' 
cited, 17 seq., 24, 26seq , AS^eg , 71 
seq., 152, 2S5 seq.; mentioned, 74, 
77. 106, 284, 288. " Paterna," 
cited, 33 seq., 36. "Political Fables," 



250 «. " Wonders of the Invisible 
World," 103. Other works men- 
tioned, 66, 83 seq., 100, 117, 121, 154, 
166 seq., 173 seq., 178, 182, 189, 192, 
215. 237. 239, 244, 278, 280, 295, 298. 

Yale, Elihu, 266 seq. 

Yale College, foundation, 186, 248; 
name and character, 266 seq. ; Cot- 
ton Mather's relations to, ib. ; con- 
version of Cutler, 282. 



MAKERS OF AMERICA, 



The following is a list of the subjects and authors so 
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Robert Fulton (i 765-181 5); His Life and its Results. 
By Prof. R. H. Thurston, of Cornell University. 

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Father Juniper Serra (17 13- 1784), and the Franciscan 
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Cotton Mather (1663- 1728), Theologian, Author, Be- 
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Barrett Wendell, of Harvard University. 



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George and Cecilius Calvert, Barons Baltimore of 
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Sir William Johnson (171 5-1 774), and The Six Na- 
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Sam. Houston (1793- 1862), and the Annexation of 
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Joseph Henry. LL.D. (1797- 1878), Savant and Natural 
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